


Your Faithless Love

by Lolo_row



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betrayal, F/F, Friendship, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Love, M/M, Oral Sex, Redemption, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26999920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolo_row/pseuds/Lolo_row
Summary: In the months since they were kidnapped and tortured, the Old Guard coped well as they could with a loss of one of their own—and the impending loss of another. But Nicky suspects that separation was never the answer to their suffering, and soon the team has taken sides, with Joe as the only person who continues to doubt Booker's reform. When an ally from the past returns as an enemy, their fears tend to overwhelm their tenuous alliance with each other. Who is right about Booker? And can age-old relationships survive the immense danger of this test?
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 28
Kudos: 134





	1. The Calm

Days last as long as they last. Weeks, too, and months—all take the time they take, and they are not significantly shorter, even for one who has lived almost a millennium. And when a family is broken, the heartbreak newly fresh, the moments feel longest of all.

Nicky didn't realize, at first, why he was out of sorts. It was hardly his first encounter with ennui. Living as long as he had, there were seasons—weeks, months, years, decades even—that were better than others. And worse than others. It wasn’t really in his nature to complain, so he didn’t say much about the fact that everything felt like shit lately.

It was understandable, he thought, that he felt this way. He had had a brief encounter with the kind of terror he had only met before in his dreams—his nightmares. He had experienced torture—that was nothing—and he had seen his lover experience torture, repeatedly. Die, repeatedly. But what had happened this time was, in many ways, a first. Never before had he been betrayed by a brother. Never before had he learned that his leader, his dear friend, his sister, was going to die. Like all the people in his life whom he had loved before, lifetime upon lifetime of people, Andy was now one with the warriors of the past—alive for but a moment, a breath—and then, gone. And it was shitty. He’d come to terms with it, though, eventually. Like Joe had. Yusuf. The partner of his soul.

Joe was sad, too, but he had a stronger emotion that tethered him to the world and kept him grounded: anger. For centuries, Joe had had a temper—in Nicky’s opinion, a sexy temper. When it was directed against somebody who’d crossed them, or a mutual enemy, it had been a weapon for good on countless occasions. Directed against a friend, it wasn’t as nice. Joe’s rage burned against Booker, cooler now but ever alight, embers that could never be extinguished.

Nobody else felt the anger, anymore, that Joe still seemed to feel. It had been six months.

“You should think about—”

“What, Nile?” Joe looked at her impatiently. It was the second time she’d mentioned it in as many days. “About contacting him again, so he can sell me to another lab? Separate me from my family?”

“He only wanted answers,” she said pleadingly. “We all want that. There are so few of us, and we’re not really immortal, are we? I mean, we don’t know how long we’ll still have—”

“Don’t make this about me,” Andy interrupted, and the others looked at her. “No pity,” she added. “I don’t want that. I’ve lived enough lifetimes. I certainly don’t need your pity.”

“Neither does Booker,” Joe commented.

“Joe, he’s alone,” Nile began again.

“You make yourself vulnerable by pitying him,” he replied.

Nicky said nothing. What was there to say? He couldn’t argue with his partner. He knew that he was Joe’s whole world; he knew that Booker’s actions had directly caused what, if not for Nile, would have resulted in their permanent separation, torture, and death. He knew everything. But he was still…unsettled.

They were in a safehouse in Greenland; it was a new hideout, both to them and in general. They seldom came here, having to go to a great deal of trouble to conceal themselves well enough to make the trip through the cold, rugged landscape. It was an abandoned facility once in the provenance of a conglomeration of university researchers, and now powered by the solar panels that had been installed there before cuts to their funding forced them to abandon their climate research.

“What is there to study?” Booker had said a decade ago, when they had first discovered the place. “When we’ve been observing the change over a century.”

“Over tens of centuries,” Andy had corrected him. “The progress, the technology, the immense change—how could the planet not adjust in response?”

“I would measure what the eye can see, rather than what it cannot,” Joe had said. “Nobody cares about the miniscule change in an ice cap. The loss of life, that humanity perishes…Everyone will care, if they know that.”

Nicky’s heart moved in his chest when he considered his lover’s kindness, his constant eye to the needs of the many over the few. With one, only one, sweet exception.

They had dinner, and they trained, and they looked at a map often and wondered when they would hear from Copley, their handler—when they would find out what job might entice them, or might even be Andy’s last. Of course, they had never died at every job. They were the best warriors in the world, with bodies that could heal themselves and had done so for centuries. If they hadn’t improved to superhuman degrees by now, it would be surprising. When a job came, it could be fine. But the worry was always there, beneath the surface, a phone call away.

That wasn’t why Nicky was unhappy, either.

His first inkling of why, the real why, came when he found Nile outside one evening, gazing at the Northern Lights, often visible from their patio. She was bundled against the cold, and Nicky pulled a parka over his head and joined her.

Her first words were without preamble, but Nicky knew exactly who she meant when she said, “If anything happened to him, we wouldn’t know. Somebody could capture him, you know? Torture him. We can’t protect him if we aren’t with him.”

It was beautiful, how much she cared about Booker—whom she had only just met when everything had happened. Of course, the betrayal hurt the least for her; there had been very little trust to betray.

“Copley would know if any harm came to him,” Nicky replied.

“He can’t protect him the way we would.”

“Booker can protect himself,” Nicky said. “Loneliness is the worse danger, and though people can die of it, I believe we cannot.”

Nile sighed. “It just seems so unfair. I’m not angry with him. I don’t even think Andy is, anymore. He only did what he did because he’s been so lonely, and that’s normal. Like, I feel it every day here, and it’s only been six months. I don’t know what I’d do if I’d spent a hundred years without anybody I love.”

“He wasn’t without anybody he loved,” Nicky answered, “or who loved him. We loved him. We love him, still,” he added. “But there must be a price.”

“That’s what Andy said,” Nile answered. “But six months seems like plenty of time to me.”

“It’s barely a splash in the bucket of the time we have had together,” Nicky answered.

“It’s practically half the time you’ve known him,” she replied.

Nicky hesitated. That was true. In those terms, it did seem long.

“What if I did something like that?” Nile added, eyes distant on a point in the night, light from a star sent centuries ago to earth, long turned to a ghost in its own sky. “Couldn’t take the loneliness anymore and…and tried to find out why we’re like this? What if I wanted a solution, and instead I made everything worse? Would you leave me? You’ve known me less than you’ve known him.”

Nicky sighed. “Any of us would have to pay a price, if we betrayed our team. It is not—”

“Because he didn’t view it as betrayal,” she continued, and she looked at him with eyes sparkling. “I know he didn’t. He just wanted it to end. Or at least, he wanted answers. If he thought that it would mean torture for his friends—he wouldn’t have done it.”

“We aren’t safe if we aren’t all committed to the cause, and to secrecy,” Nicky answered.

“I know,” she replied, “but we are committed to it. Booker especially. He was miserable over what he did to Andy. Do you think he’d betray us now? Because I know, and I think you know, too, that he wouldn’t. Ever.”

Nicky sighed. “I would want to keep a closer eye on him,” he said after a long pause.

Nile smiled. “I think it would be different, you know? Or it could be. With me here.”

Nicky glanced at her, then laughed. “You are very interested in him, aren’t you?”

She shook her head. “As his friend, yes, I am. And, I just—I don’t like the idea of one of us getting kicked out, and spending eternity alone.”

“Not eternity,” Nicky replied. “A hundred years is far from eternity.”

“Far, but still a long time.”

“Yes.” He sighed again. “It is a long time.”

“How would you feel if you had to be separated from Joe for that long?”

Nicky looked at her and shuddered, involuntarily. That would never be possible. Joe would never dream of betraying him; he could still hear his words in the van the night they were abducted— _he is all, and he is more_. He answered honestly, “I would rather die a thousand deaths than be without him for a single day.”

“Okay, well,” she straightened up from the railing she had been leaning on, an embarrassed smile on her face. “That’s a little dramatic, but basically my point. If you wouldn’t do it to Joe, then you shouldn’t do it to Booker. The whole point is that he felt alone. Now, how do you think he feels?”

Nicky couldn’t answer her; he felt the truth of her words, the justice of her anger and frustration. Booker had taken action that was misguided, and perhaps arrogant, but never—he believed—would have done if he had known where that path would lead. The pain it would cause to the ones he loved—his only family now.

“What do you want to do?” he finally asked her.

She looked at her boots, toeing softly in the snow. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not this. Not…a hundred years.”

Nicky nodded, though he couldn’t quite discern what he wanted. He knew Joe’s feelings—knew that his lover still awoke in the night in a cold sweat, screaming in Arabic, reaching tortured hands for the warmth of Nicky’s body. He knew that eternal torture was a genuine possibility, a reality that had already claimed one of their friends, and could well have claimed them all. The madness of loneliness that must have driven Booker to do it—it was almost incomprehensible to him. Almost, but not quite. There had been those early years, before he had fallen in love with Yusuf. There had been a period, painful and solitary and endless, when he hadn’t known how he could bear the devastation of living forever. When he kept meeting—and killing—the only man who had known, and shared, his secret. How cruel he had thought it was, then, that he was to share eternity with his greatest enemy. And then, when he had finally come to know him, his greatest love. The truest, most beautiful, most exquisite soul who had ever lived. Without Yusuf, he knew deep in his bones, he would rather die. Even with purpose, with friends, with family. It would mean nothing without Yusuf.

How miserable Booker must have been.

“Maybe,” Nicky said finally, and Nile’s head snapped up, eyes so eager. So young. “Maybe we can talk to Andy,” he said. “See if, perhaps…there is another way. Another price.”

“Do you think Joe will agree to it?” Nile said, and she looked so hopeful that he couldn’t do anything but lie.

“Sure,” he nodded, “in time.” But was it really a lie? Joe could be angry, but he could also be incredibly level-headed. He was a good listener, and rational, if he could ever just calm down.

They went inside, and the others were quiet—Andy in a chair, a book in her hand, and Joe with the TV on, folding a basket of freshly washed laundry. The domesticity of it all, juxtaposed with the danger lurking—and the conflict. That was lurking, too.

Joe looked up at him and smiled, just as he always did. That face still made his knees weak—eyes like stars, kind and warm and overpoweringly beautiful. How could he be anything but grateful?

But he was. He felt unsettled. A different feeling than any he had known in his life, his life of loving someone so deeply and knowing himself to be deeply loved in return. He had had all he needed, but now it felt like it wasn’t enough.

It was Booker that was making Nicky feel this way—Booker’s absence, and the knowledge that solitude, for any of them, was too steep a price to pay. A banishment was an unfair price. He would talk to Andy about it tomorrow. Having said it aloud to Nile, he could finally begin to feel some semblance of peace. When he fell asleep that night, tucked warmly in Joe’s arms, he felt that he could rest easy—secure in the knowledge that he knew what was right. Making it all come to fruition—that would be the next task. But he believed in what was right; if he strove for it with a true heart, he believed it would come.


	2. Before the Storm

They were awoken by a shout, anguished and terrified, from upstairs. Nile was asleep there, and Andy was keeping the first watch while Nicky and Joe rested—until nobody rested, and all ran, horrorstruck, to the room where she sat up in bed, shaking. A nightmare. Obviously, a nightmare.

“I saw her again,” Nile said. She was panting, sweating, fists wrapped tightly in the blanket she’d kicked mostly from her legs. Her eyes were haunted, but as seconds passed, the look faded away. “It was just a dream,” she said softly.

“Will you dream of her forever?” Joe muttered, his relief for her safety sounding like frustration as he spoke, turning to take a few paces in the room.

“It was Quynh,” Nile said, panting, “but—but, Andy, I saw her.”

Andy nodded. She could never speak how relieved she was that she had already found Quynh, that she could not dream of her. It was enough to know that Quynh was enduring eternal torture of infinite drowning; she could not bear to be tortured likewise in her dreams by seeing the woman she loved die, and die, and die, and die.

But Nile’s next words turned her blood cold. “She wasn’t drowning, in my dream,” Nile said. “The box rusted. It rusted, and—and she got it open. And she swam up.” Joe stopped pacing, and Andy froze on the spot. Nicky, instinctively, came to Andy’s side.

“What?” Andy said, her voice low.

“She’s out,” Nile said. “She swam to a shore, but I don’t know where—”

“Tell me what you saw,” Andy said urgently, coming to sit on the edge of Nile’s bed. “Any landmarks, any buildings, any people. What was there?”

Nile shook her head. “I don’t know, I—I’m sorry. It was nowhere I’d ever seen before. The beach—it was rocky, and cold, and the waves were rough, but she kept healing herself and climbing up higher and higher.”

“That could be anywhere,” Andy said, balling her fists in frustration.

“You were screaming,” Joe said. He was across the room, near the window, but he was looking at Nile. “Why?”

Nile looked confused for a moment. “I was?”

“We all heard it.”

She paused, eyes closing as she remembered it. “I—I think—I think maybe she was screaming.”

“Is she hurt?” Andy said—a foolish question, of course, because nothing could hurt Quynh, as she well knew.

“No. No, it was…” her eyes closed, and Nicky moved towards her, the same sympathetic instinct drawing him to her side as had brought him to Andy’s. “Rage,” she said, opening her eyes at the exact moment he reached her. “She—” Nile shook her head again, too disturbed to put further words to all she felt.

After a short silence, Andy said, “We have to find her. We can’t leave her alone like this.”

“She was going somewhere,” Nile said. “I couldn’t understand it at first, but—I think she’s looking for somebody. There was this hunger—I’ve never felt anything like it. She’s following her dream.”

“She can’t be dreaming about me,” Andy said. “She could only dream of who she hadn’t met. Maybe she wants to find you, Nile. Maybe she’s dreaming of you.”

“No,” Nile answered, and she opened her eyes, realization dawning on her as it dawned on the others, and they all knew the name she would utter before it left her lips. The traitor. “Booker.”

They were up the rest of the night, talking. Arguing.

“We know where Booker is living,” Nile said. “If we go to him, we’ll probably find her. It’s easy.”

“It isn’t easy,” Joe protested. “We were betrayed by him once; anything could happen again.”

“I don’t think he would betray us again,” Andy said. “Especially not while he knows that I’m not immortal anymore.”

“So we can’t pity you, but Booker can?” Joe replied.

“It isn’t about Booker,” she said, “it’s about Quynh. She’s been alone for hundreds of years. What if it was Nicky? Wouldn’t you go to him?”

“Of course, I would,” he said, “but we have no way of knowing whether Quynh will even find Booker. We are just as likely to find her if we try to track her in other ways. If we get Copley on the case.”

“I would rather he didn’t know about Quynh, if we can keep her a secret,” Andy replied. “There ought to be at least one of us who still is.”

“We all would be,” Joe began to say, but Andy shot him a look, and he fell silent.

“I want to find her,” Nicky said.

“We all want to find her,” Joe replied impatiently.

“I want to find her badly enough that I will see Booker to do it,” he added pointedly.

“So will I,” Nile said.

“You always wanted to see him sooner,” Joe answered, conveniently passing over Nicky’s opinion and looking at Nile. “You weren’t tortured by him, and you didn’t see the love of your life tortured by him, either.”

“I did,” Nicky said, though his heart stuttered a little when he saw the way Joe looked at him. “I did, and I still want to see him.”

“He may not know anything about Quynh,” Joe said dismissively.

“Even if he does not,” Nicky said, and then paused, his words fading to quietness and his eyes holding Joe’s steady, willing him to understand. “Even if he does not, I would still see him.” In his native tongue, he added, “He is our brother, Yusuf. We are all he has.”

In the same language, Yusuf replied, “It did not stop him betraying us, Nicolo.”

“You have forgotten how lonely it was.”

“You are wrong. I will never forget that. It is because I have not forgotten that I cannot forgive him.”

“The man I love would not be so unforgiving.” It was spoken unthinkingly, Nicky speaking from the exhaustion he felt, and the conviction of what was right—not remembering, as he had earlier in the evening, that it was sensitive for Joe. That he would need time, and perhaps coaxing.

Nile hadn’t understood anything they’d said, but she took the opportunity of the silent pause that followed to say, “Nicky and I have been talking about it. We both agreed that we don’t want to go through with the hundred-year banishment. We were going to come to you today, anyway, Andy.”

Andy nodded her head slowly. “I think maybe that’s a longer conversation, but we don’t need to get into it now. Whether the banishment ends or not, we have to make an exception. For Quynh.”

“Fine,” Joe said, looking away with a hardness in his eyes that startled Nicky. They didn’t often quarrel, and Nicky hated the feeling of it—of being the object of Joe’s anger. “That shouldn’t be the only way we look for her, but if one of us wants to go to Booker, that’s your choice.”

Andy said, “We’re a team. We have to agree on whatever we do.”

“I agree,” Joe replied impatiently. “I just said I agree. You go to him, then, Andy.” He glanced at Nile. “And you.”

“I want to see Quynh,” Nicky said.

Joe just stared at him, something unreadable in his eyes.

“What do you want to do?” Nicky asked Andy, after tearing his eyes away from Joe, who had paced away from him and was facing the wall.

“I want to go to Paris,” she said.

“Together?”

“We can split up,” she said, “ask around. Find her.”

Nicky nodded. “Okay. I’ll look up flights. We can be to Paris by mid-day.”

Everyone parted, preparations to be made, and Joe was left, the last one in the room, watching the shadowy window and wondering whether they would not come to regret everything.

It was a hastily made, half-baked plan. They would come to Paris, and Andy and Nile would go straight to Booker, while Nicky and Joe would patrol the city, seeking answers. It was the one concession that they would make for Joe, who was still angry, and who felt betrayed all over again.

They drove to the airport in a van, Andy and Nile in front, and Joe with Nicky in the far back seat. Joe had gotten in and sat back there, it seemed, to avoid him, but Nicky wasn’t having it.

“Hey,” Nicky whispered to him, nudging him with his shoulder as they travelled down the moonlit road.

Joe turned.

“I’ve been thinking, it just isn’t fair. If it were you who’d betrayed us—”

“I would never betray you,” he said, a whisper, full of conviction.

Nicky continued as though he hadn’t been interrupted, “I wouldn’t be able to live a hundred years without you. I wouldn’t be able to live a single year without you. I don’t think you could live without me, either.”

Joe just looked at him coldly. “If you were the kind of man who could betray me, I would not have loved you in the first place,” he said.

Nicky drew in a sharp breath. He hadn’t expected something so final, so unmerciful, from a person at whose hands he had known such tenderness, whose lips had breathed such beauty to him.

Seeing his lover recoil at his words, Joe relented slightly, his posture softening. “We could have been like Quynh,” Joe said calmly. “Tortured forever. Barely human in her captors’ eyes.”

“But it didn’t happen.”

“It did happen. That’s exactly what began to happen, and what would have happened. Why does no one see that we can’t trust him?”

“Why can’t you see that we must trust him?” They had been whispering, but now Nicky’s voice rose in frustration. “What if he was the only way to find me? Would you go to him then?”

“Yes,” Joe said emphatically. “Yes, and that’s why I’m here. I’m here, aren’t I? What more do you want from me? I agreed to a mission that I disagree with so deeply that I can feel it in my bones. Because that’s what I would do to find you, and that’s what we must do to find Quynh. That doesn’t mean we should welcome Booker back. It doesn’t mean anything except that we need him to find her. We banished him for a reason, Nicolo.”

“Well, I think it was a mistake.”

Joe shook his head. “You and Nile were talking about it, huh? Would have been nice if you’d clued me in.”

“I was going to talk to you today.”

Joe turned. “Fine. It’s today. Talk.”

“Not when you’re like this.”

“Like what? Confused? Angry?”

“Yes. If you were thinking clearly—”

Joe’s words came rapidly, spat out in a harsh whisper, all semblance of calmness gone. “Don’t tell me I’m not thinking clearly. I was captured and tortured like a lab rat as a direct consequence of Booker’s choices. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he lied for a long time. To play us all like that, to seem like he was our friend—”

“He was our friend.” Nicky shook his head and corrected himself. “He is. There are so few of us, Joe. We can’t turn on each other now.”

“He turned on us!”

“He was driven mad by grief! Don’t you feel any sympathy for him?”

“No. Does he think we don’t know grief? That we haven’t suffered?”

Nicky said, “I don’t think he was thinking about us—”

“Exactly. Then why should I think about him?”

Nicky made a frustrated sound. “Because that’s the right thing to do, Joe.”

“You always get to decide what’s right, don’t you?”

“No, but—”

“You think because I have temper, if I raise my voice, that means you don’t have to listen to anything I say.”

“I think that if you respected me, you’d listen to me without my needing to raise my voice.”

“Bullshit. I listen to you. You just want me to agree with you, and if I don’t, then I must be wrong, because I have a temper.”

It had been a long time, probably ten years, since they’d had this particular fight. But it did sometimes come up.

“It doesn’t help anything when you lose your temper.”

“It doesn’t help anything when I let people walk all over me, either.”

“And that’s what you think I do?”

“You’re weak, and he’ll exploit your weakness.”

“Oh, I’m weak? Really?”

Joe closed his eyes, shaking his head once, sharply. “I didn’t mean—”

“Go to hell.”

The tension fell suddenly, heavy and thick. They had argued, of course, in their millennium of loving one another, plenty of times. But they seldom insulted each other, as Joe had just done—seldom attacked the other’s character. Joe’s remorse was palpable, his desire to withdraw the words, but he didn’t voice it. He pressed his forehead into the palms of his hands, grunting in frustration, before turning in the cool darkness to reach for Nicky’s hand. Nicky elbowed him away.

They parked the car and walked through an empty airport—only other redeye passengers around, and none of them very energetic. The quiet was unbroken as they boarded the plane, and it was too late to change the seats, which meant Nicky had to sit by Joe, even though he was still fuming. When Joe reached for him again a few minutes later, he elbowed him away again.

“I’m sorry, Nicky.”

“I’m trying to sleep.”

“I shouldn’t have said that. I was—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Nicolo…”

“Look, I’m not going to see Booker, okay? You say I can’t, then I can’t. Wouldn’t want him to think I’m weak, would I?”

“That isn’t what I meant to say—”

“Be quiet and let me sleep.”

Nicky’s words were harsh, spoken with finality, and Joe didn’t try again.

There was guilt for a moment, of course. Nicky’s heart was too tender to wound his lover without feeling pain himself. But Nicky was tired, achy, made cruel by his fatigue and months of unhappiness. He closed his eyes and didn’t look at Joe again. Not when they deplaned, not when they picked up some fruit for breakfast with Andy and Nile at an airport café, and not when they walked out into the overcast, Paris morning.

“Okay, everybody,” Andy said when they reached the relative privacy of the tarmac outside the airport. “You know where we’ll meet. You know when.”

There were no burner phones this time; it was too risky, so soon after their captivity in England. They’d made the plan on the way, and everyone knew it by heart. Andy and Nile walked off to the car rental lot, and Nicky and Joe stood behind, looking at each other.

“We’d better get going,” Nicky said.

Joe nodded. “Alright.” A pause. “Can we talk first?”

“We don’t have time.”

“Nicky…”

“See you in two days.”

“Hang on, though. Do you—” Joe hesitated. “Do you want to get a place together, for the night? It’s Paris.” Joe waited, cautiously optimistic. His eyes—damn him.

The anger felt familiar—like an old friend. Nicky chose the anger and turned away. “No,” he said coldly. “See you in two days.” He walked away, leaving Joe staring after him—he assumed—and found a ride to a port in town where he suspected, if Quynh arrived from the north, he would be able to hear news of her.

He tried not to think about Joe. He had been unreasonable for six months; Nicky was entitled to a little unreasonableness now. In two days, he would be calm again. Until then, Joe could be alone and see how he liked it.

Whenever Nicky’s heart began to feel a pang of longing for him, he reminded himself of Joe’s words— _You’re weak_ —and was angry again.


	3. Here Today

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading my story! This is my first time writing fanfic, and I'm so excited that people are actually reading what I wrote and engaging with it. This is a really fun creative outlet for me, so I appreciate it. Thanks to all who have commented and left kudos, and I am hopeful that you will enjoy the direction that the story takes--though, I do plan for there to be a few detours and a lot of drama before things resolve. I'm a sucker for drama. :) I hope you enjoy this next installment! 
> 
> Oh, and also--this is the chapter that the "graphic depictions of violence" warning is all about.

Andy couldn’t stop shaking. It was a temperate day, and she was in general a relatively calm person—millennia of life as a warrior having lent her stoicism, and centuries of grief making her strong—but today, her legs were bouncing in the rental car that Nile had kindly agreed to drive for them, and twice already she had missed two turns on the way to Booker’s apartment because she couldn’t get Quynh out of her head.

Would she be happy to see Andy? Would she be angry with her? There was a good hundred years after Quynh’s capture that Nicolo, Yusuf, and herself had scoured the seas for her. They’d even bought their own boat. They’d dropped fishing nets and anchors, meticulously dragging each one over swaths of deep-water sand for years, and years, and years. When they’d given up at last, it had been Andy’s idea. She had been sure that it would be impossible, even if they tried for a thousand years. When, a few decades prior, there had been the technology to search differently—deep-sea diving, sonar, satellite imagery—Andy had refused to allow Nicky to look into it, though he and Joe had already paid for a scuba lesson. At that point, they’d met Booker, and he’d begun dreaming of Quynh—and Andy was afraid. Afraid to see the woman whose insanity raged nightly in Booker’s slumbering mind. Afraid to admit to her that she had stopped looking; that looking and hoping and finding nothing year after year had shattered her heart. Afraid to let herself hope again.

Now, Andy was the one whose life hung in the balance. She was the one who, through one fatal blow, could be gone forever, nothing but a shadow of memory amid her friends’ grief.

It didn’t mean she had to die soon, though. She was, in her body, only forty or so. She could live another forty years, or fifty, or sixty, she thought with a smile, if she developed some healthier lifestyle habits and some very good luck. Eat less sugar. Maybe attack bad guys with axes a little less often. That kind of thing.

There had been a time that Andy had longed for death, longed for the power of joining Quynh in the darkness. Now, Quynh was alive and free, and every moment was precious.

Andy’s knee bounced, and her heart pounded, and when she finally had the wherewithal to tell Nile where to park, there was nothing for it but to go inside. Go inside and find out whether Quynh hated her, or loved her, or resented her, or all of the above. Whether her eyes still wrinkled when she laughed. Whether her lips still tasted sweet.

Whatever Nile and Andy expected to find when they reached Booker’s apartment, it wasn’t a hostage situation. The first sign that something was amiss was the broken whiskey bottle on the steps leading up to the door. Then, that it was slightly ajar. And, lastly, that there was an eerie laugh coming from inside—a woman’s laugh.

“Now, you cannot be ignorant as you appear. You must know where they—”

“Quynh.” Andy’s voice held more emotion in it than Nile had ever heard from her, from anybody, and for a moment, she was so arrested by the way the women looked at each other that she barely noticed the man who was tied up in a chair, a day or two of beard growth on his face, dried blood clinging to his cheeks as he gasped himself alive again after a particularly savage blow to the head. Quynh had a blade in her hand, and rage in her eyes.

“You,” she said, standing, and she approached Andy with violence. “I want to watch you die.”

“No!” Nile said, throwing herself between them and absorbing the blade within herself. She faded dizzily to the floor, but not before hearing Booker address his tormentor.

“Andy is no longer immortal. She will die if you strike her.”

When Nile came to, the women were face-to-face, with nobody to protect Andy from the armed woman whose insanity Nile had felt firsthand in her dreams. She got to her feet gingerly, but Booker held out his hand, palm out, and said, with a small smile at her, “It’s alright. My friend.”

“Why now?” Quynh was saying, with one hand on Andy’s arm.

“I don’t know,” she replied, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry you can’t kill me.”

“It would make me feel better,” Quynh answered, and Andy laughed. It was a horrible sound to hear, disappointed and sad.

“I missed you,” Andy whispered, hardly able to get the words out of a throat choking with tears.

Quynh tried to answer, but it seemed that any recollection of the past made her a slave to her insanity again, and the wildness in her eyes, the darkness, alarmed Nile. Now she did stand and put herself between them, but Andy said, “It’s alright. I have to die sometime.”

“I don’t want you to die,” Quynh said, louder than necessary. “I want you to live. It’s the rest of them I want to die.”

“What, us?” Nile said, and she looked again at Booker with alarm.

“No,” Quynh answered. Her calmness was almost otherworldly; nobody sane could have been so calm as she said, “Everybody except for you. For us. The world that would have us die. It is them whom we must defeat.”

Andy drew in a breath. “Quynh—”

“No,” Quynh said. Then, in a tone that struck Nile as unnecessarily cruel, she looked at Andy and added, “You still love me, don’t you?”

“Of course I—”

“We were separated for five hundred years because of them. And I was drowning.” She could say it so calmly. Nile felt her body growing colder. Unconsciously, seeking comfort that she hadn’t realized she needed, she went to Booker and began to untie the ropes that bound him. Freed, he stood beside her and hesitated for only a moment before pulling her into his arms. Echoes of Quynh’s loneliness haunted Nile’s mind, and she held Booker tightly.

“Causing them pain won’t heal our pain,” Andy said desperately.

“You don’t know that,” Quynh answered. “I have died infinite times, only to wake to the same terror. I have suffered in ways you cannot imagine. To be vulnerable at the hands of men—it is a fate worse than a million deaths.”

Nile couldn’t help it; she glanced at Booker. The devastation in his eyes made her miserable, and she heard Joe’s words in the back of her mind— _You make yourself vulnerable by pitying him_. If Quynh knew what Booker had done—she paused. Did Quynh know? She had been dreaming of him, after all, for years.

“Why did you come here?” Nile asked Quynh carefully. “Why Booker?”

“What?” Quynh said, not bothering to give Nile the courtesy of more than the briefest of glances.

“I was dreaming about you,” she said, “and I know you dreamt me, too. You probably knew I was with Andy, didn’t you? But you didn’t come to me. You came to Booker. Why?”

Quynh scoffed, looking down at the knife in her hand. She was so still, like a cat before it pounces. “I know what he’s done,” she said. She turned, violently, and struck him in the throat. Nile gasped—she couldn’t stop herself—before leaping back, horrified. He would awaken—but what would happen then? She saw the blood, in puddles of varying sizes and varying states of dryness on the floor. She could only imagine how many times Quynh had killed Booker.

“He betrayed you,” Quynh said, looking at Andy. “I watched every thought form in his mind. I watched him worry that he would be found out. I watched him accept payment for his treachery.”

Nile glanced down at Booker, who was stirring feebly at her feet.

Andy whispered, “Quynh.”

“He thought he was suffering, but he did not know true suffering. I wanted to make him feel real pain.”

“It won’t help,” Andy said desperately, and she went to Quynh as though she couldn’t stop herself, folding her in her arms, though Quynh remained stiff at her side. “Hurting someone else won’t make you feel better.”

Quynh turned her face towards Andy and said, with the same eerie calmness, “You haven’t heard my plans. When you do, you’ll change your mind.”

Nicky had kind eyes and a good heart, and the kind of attractive build that made people want to talk to him when he approached a stranger. He was perhaps a little bit less popular than Joe—the most beautiful man Nicky had ever laid eyes on, easily—but he still found that it was easy to get the answers he sought, as he asked around Paris, seeking out the people most likely to notice a traveler. And the answers were surprising. Yes, people had seen her. She’d ridden a bus. She’d had something to eat. She’d taken a ferry. The drawing of her that Joe had made, beautifully sketched and folded into Nicky’s hands before they’d left the safehouse, was easily recognizable by several people Nicky questioned. He rapidly realized that Quynh had reached Paris before they had.

She wasn’t on the streets that he could find, and the route she’d taken was to the center of the city. It was obvious to Nicky where she must be.

The excitement built to a fever pitch, until he was so agitated, he could hardly slow his pace to a walk. Going to Booker’s apartment was easy; he’d been there before, years ago. It was where all of them stayed, unobserved in the bustle of the city, when they needed to go to the heart of Paris. It wasn’t something that happened often, of course, but it did sometimes happen. The roads were familiar, and on the way Nicky thought that, if Joe’s questioning around Paris looked anything like his own, they would both end up here. At Booker’s.

That thought made him sigh to himself as he walked up a Paris street, wishing Joe were less stubborn. He had spent almost a thousand years in love with a man who infuriated him, sometimes. Not often. Only sometimes. If Joe hadn’t been so stubborn, he’d be about to see Quynh now, like Nicky was. Nicky could hardly wait.

He came in without knocking, like always, and he felt some trepidation stepping through the threshold, a premonition that something just wasn’t right. And then he saw them. Quynh, Andy, Booker, and Nile were all there, and it looked like everybody was covered in blood—everybody but Andy, who had an expression in her eyes that Nicky had never seen before. And Quynh—she looked just the same as he remembered her. His affection for his friends rose, and he wasn’t sure who to embrace first.

Quynh made the decision for him; with a nervous look, she reached into her belt. With a glance at Andy, she asked, “Will he die, too?”

But Andy’s tired reply of, “Don’t, Quynh,” made her sheath the knife again. Nicky swallowed, looking between them. What in the world was going on here?

“Quynh…” he said softly. She shook her head, and there was a wild look in her eye as she turned away. She seemed self-conscious, too, and Nicky felt an awkwardness in her presence that he had never known before. He glanced at Nile and Booker, and he saw that the former looked angry, and the latter nervous. Andy only looked sad.

Quynh seemed to make a decision about Nicky, and without another word or even a look at him, she turned to Andy. “We still need to talk about—”

“No,” Andy said emphatically, “and that’s my final answer. We’re not discussing it anymore.”

Nicky longed to know what he was missing, and how the meeting had been at first, and whether Quynh had greeted the others as coldly as himself. He wanted to give her whatever she needed, anything to help her, but it seemed clear that she wouldn’t accept it.

Quynh dropped the subject that had been so upsetting to Andy almost too easily, shrugging her shoulders and walking away. Nicky noticed that she kept glancing at Booker when she thought nobody else was watching.

It was late afternoon, and somebody mentioned being hungry. The problem was, Booker had almost no food in his refrigerator, nor anything but booze in his cupboards. Nile seemed particularly unsettled by that fact, though Booker made a concerted effort not to appear pitiful.

“I eat out, that’s all,” he said. “Two hundred and fifty years, I’ve never learned to cook.”

“Now that Nicky’s here,” Andy said, “we can have some real food. I’ve been spoiled the past six months.”

A pause, awkward and careful.

“I’ll go to the store,” Booker said.

“Your shirt,” Nile said, stopping him. He looked down and saw the blood, blood everywhere. Nile was covered in it, too.

“I’ll go,” Nicky said, and turned out of the apartment before anyone could stop him. There was a shop nearby, and he found all he needed right away. But he stayed outside, feeling unsettled about being at Booker’s. He wished he could consult with Joe about what he had just seen, the horrible look in Quynh’s eyes, the cold manner of her welcome, the tension between her and—well, everybody.

He paced up and down the street twice, before he realized that his presence there was probably risky, and that raising suspicion now would make all of them vulnerable. It was growing cool, the sun setting in the East. He had to stop.

When he came inside, he observed his friends again. Nile and Booker were together, talking quietly, and Andy was arguing with Quynh.

“We’re not killing innocent people, Quynh.”

“Why not? Weren’t we innocent when they attacked us?”

“Sure,” Andy said, “and that wasn’t right, either.”

“I have no concept of ‘right’ anymore, and neither should you,” Quynh answered. “I was submerged, without a single breath of air, for centuries. Someone, I’m sure, thought that was right. Right is merely an opinion, and it’s one that you and I don’t share. I believe that consequence, that retribution, is right.”

It was so like Nicky’s own recent argument with Joe, and it made him feel strange, suddenly. It occurred to him as he looked around that tonight, everybody was together except for Joe. It was an unsettling realization, and the more he thought about it, the worse he felt. They could have done this differently, respecting their prior agreements and Joe’s feelings. They could have agreed to meet up somewhere with Quynh tonight, still respecting Booker’s banishment. They could have sent word for her and then met up with her privately at any of their other safehouses in France. There were infinite possibilities for what they could have done, if maintaining the banishment had been a priority to them, as perhaps it ought to have been. After all, that is what they’d agreed upon, and now that he was here, Nicky had to admit that he didn’t feel any better about Booker than he had when they’d banished him. He still seemed cagey, and distant, and like maybe he was keeping a secret.

Joe had been right, he realized. It was too soon to trust Booker. But of course, when Joe had gotten angry, Nicky hadn’t listened. He’d chosen to focus on the manner of what he was saying, instead of the reason behind it—and that wasn’t fair. Joe was a far more reasonable man than Nicky had given him credit for. Being here with the others but without Joe felt distinctly wrong. Nicky realized, with a horrible dawning of guilt, that he’d actually specifically promised Joe he wouldn’t do the very thing he had done.

Nicky was brought back to the moment by Andy, who was shaking her head at Quynh and saying in a raised voice, “Nobody exists anymore to avenge yourself on.”

“The descendants of the same people who had me killed are still living in the South of England,” she replied. “I’ve found out about them. The little town, the church, the people—all is still there, just as it was.”

“Not the same people,” Andy argued.

“Their descendants. The same religious fervor, the same cruelty, the same disease of intolerance. We will burn their city to the ground.”

It was clear Andy didn’t take her seriously, but across the room, Booker seemed to stop listening to Nile; his eyes were raised, looking at Quynh. Nicky’s concern rose. There was something going on here that he didn’t understand.

Andy said, “We aren’t in the business of burning down cities. Don’t you remember?”

“I don’t know what I remember,” Quynh replied, “except a watery grave.”

When the food was ready, it turned out nobody was very hungry. At the dinner table, there was more arguing. Andy wanted Quynh to come with them to the safe house, to have a secluded place to heal in relative comfort. To take some time. Quynh’s cryptic answers to her invitations—“We’ll see” and “Perhaps afterwards” were met with continual pressing, continual convincing.

Andy said, “We can leave tomorrow night. We have a rendezvous with Joe, and then we’ll be on the next plane.”

Booker looked at Andy with questions in his eyes, and she clarified, “We’ll _all_ be on the next plane.”

That was a surprise, and Nicky wasn’t sure he was on board with it. He said quietly, “Shouldn’t we talk more about whether Booker joins us?”

Nile sighed with frustration, and Andy said, “It’s just for now. With so many of us here in Paris, and asking around about Quynh, anybody who wants to find us could track us. Any of us.”

Nicky said, “Then let’s get Quynh somewhere safe. But Booker is on his own, even if he goes to another safehouse. That’s what we agreed.” What Joe agreed, he added silently.

Andy seemed to hear the fairness of that, but she was tired. “Fine. Fine. Let’s just talk about it tomorrow.”

It was a small apartment, but there was room enough to sleep. Nicky was surprised that sleep came for him at all, given how miserable he was. He’d slept in his share of shitholes—in caves, on trains, under hanging rocks on mountain sides; dusty floors were nothing to him, except that normally, he had Joe beside him. He couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Joe’s face, that hopeful smile he’d given him before they’d parted ways that morning. He wished he’d said they could spend the night together; he wished it so much, he felt sick with regret. When an hour had passed and he was still replaying their argument in his head and drafting for himself a mental list of all the ways he’d apologize when he finally saw him tomorrow, he’d taken the pillow from under his head and hugged it to his own chest, imagining it was Joe’s body, warm and strong. Then, at last, he was able to fall asleep—though not with anything like peace. Where was Joe? Was he somewhere safe? Of course, he could take care of himself, but Nicky still wondered. And missed him. And felt like shit.

Exhaustion finally took him under, and he lay on the floor and slept. He slept, until about 2 o’clock, when he awoke abruptly, in the deep darkness of night, and found his wrists and ankles in chains.


	4. Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everybody is still fighting in this chapter. Nobody knows why anybody is doing anything...but they'll start to figure it out soon. 
> 
> Thanks for kudos, comments, suggestions. I'm new at this and you are all very kind!

Paris was one of Joe’s favorite places. He’d brought Nicky here countless times, just for a week or two together, when he thought they could use a little change. There were places all over the world that he’d whisked his lover away to, but this was one of their favorites. The romance was built in, so there was very little for Joe to do in the way of preparation. A little gift, perhaps, to remind Nicky that he still thrilled him. An evening somewhere they’d never been, or a night somewhere they’d never yet made love, lost in each other’s fragrance, intoxicated with passion and wine.

He felt like a fool for suggesting they spend the night together here now, today of all days. They were here to find Quynh. Quynh, one of his very dearest friends, whose companionship had been his anchor through many years and crises of his own. Living nearly a thousand years is not easy, and friends are all that keep you sane at times. Now, Quynh had been alone, and hurting deeply, and there was nothing in the world more important than finding her. No matter how remorseful he was about offending Nicky when they were both tired and overwrought, he shouldn’t have forgotten the mission. As soon as he’d had half an hour of clarity and solitude to think about it, he was sure of that fact. He wanted to find her desperately.

So he settled down and focused on the mission. It wasn’t his first argument with his lover; it surely wouldn’t be the last. He didn’t fixate on it, and instead made his way to the usual knowledgeable locals, to learn what anybody knew. He pretended she was a friend who didn’t speak any French and was in need of his guidance. Had anyone seen a face like this? He showed the picture everywhere, but nobody on the south side of Paris had seen her. He headed north after grabbing a quick baguette for dinner and scarfing it down on the way. It was a dreary day, and he was growing used to hearing no, no, no—and then, astonishing him, he began to have luck. _Oui_ , the picture he showed the security guard and the grocery clerk and the cab company was familiar. In fact, he was not the only person to have asked about her that day. She was in high demand, wasn’t she?

Concerned, Joe put the picture away. There was no sense in over-exposing her. Quynh was here, in Paris.

Excitement built and filled Joe’s heart. It hadn’t quite been real to him before, but when the third person confirmed that they’d seen her, he couldn’t deny it or doubt it any longer. Quynh was safe. His dear, dear friend was in the same city as him. It was almost as though he was already hugging her, hearing her laugh.

But then, it wouldn’t be the same. Of course it wouldn’t. He could only imagine what she’d endured. He longed for the power of doing anything to make her whole again.

For a moment, he forgot about all about the conflicts of the preceding days; he pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and went to hail a cab to bring him to Booker’s apartment. That must be where she was. The thought of finding her was so all-consuming that he almost let himself go straight to her—until he realized, with a dawning of guilt, that he’d made Nicky promise not to go to Booker’s. Or, rather, Nicky had inferred that he would make him, and had voluntarily promised it. It would be complete hypocrisy to go now.

He sighed in frustration as he looked at the bills in his hand. He was certain that Andy and Nile would have found Quynh by now. Tomorrow, there would be the rendezvous. Meanwhile, to go there without Nicky would be unfair—a betrayal of his trust. He’d allowed his temper to overtake his reason; he’d had his priorities all wrong. Who cared if Booker was with Quynh? If ever there had been a reason for an exception, this was it. And besides, it might feel good to confront Booker and have another round of shouting at him. That particular benefit—that he’d get to finish telling him what he really thought of him—hadn’t occurred to him until now, and it made him even more annoyed that he couldn’t just head straight there.

He sighed again. He didn’t deserve to see Quynh when he was like this.

She was fine, he reminded himself. She was with Andy—and Andy would probably prefer a little privacy with her, he thought with a smile. He would see them tomorrow. In the meantime, his own solitude would be his penance. For putting anything before Quynh.

Meanwhile, there was the city—and somewhere in it was Nicky. After an afternoon apart from the man he loved, everything felt different. He was a warrior, a centuries-old fighter. There was no reason to fear seeing Booker. And frankly, if deep down he’d believed Booker was dangerous, Joe would have never agreed to letting Nile and Andy go to his place without him. His instincts would have warned him, and he would have come—to help protect Andy. Nicky had wanted to do that—to be there for his friends, his family. Joe should have understood. Nicky had tried to explain, but Joe hadn’t listened. In the solitude of the Parisian crowds, regret flooded him.

There were places they’d stayed in the past. A hotel outside town, a little hostel in the heart of the city, a park where they’d met each other countless times in years past. He went everywhere he thought Nicky might be, but he could find him nowhere. Tomorrow, they would see each other again. Tomorrow, they would talk, and Joe would apologize to him—this time, being sure to listen and not just talk.

Recollecting Andy and Quynh and all they’d gone through, their long separation, made him feel anxious to be with Nicky again. The moon was out, and the air was becoming chilly. He should find somewhere to sleep. He could think more tomorrow about whether Booker’s punishment had perhaps missed the root of the problem, or even made the problem worse. As he laid in bed that night, alone and feeling every bit of it, he closed his eyes and tried to imagine how Andy had felt, for five hundred years. Her friends, he well knew, were her only consolation. He smiled to himself, remembering how kind Nicky always was to her, in particular. Nicky was always, always kind.

Except, he supposed—sometimes—to him. This morning had been horrible. They were both tense, sad, exhausted. Pushing each other away, probably, when they needed each other the most.

There was nothing for it but to sleep; tomorrow would come much sooner if he did. He got a hotel room at last, but the bed was cold and lonely, and there passed a long time before he drifted off.

“What the hell?” Andy fought hard against the chains that she’d awoken to find wrapped around her limbs. “What—where are we? What’s—”

“Shh. You’re fine. Just a little chain to make sure you don’t go anywhere,” Quynh said. Her eyes were white lights in the dark, and for the first time since seeing her in the bloodstained, dreary apartment in Paris, Andy was afraid.

“Where are we?”

“I wasn’t comfortable in the city,” Quynh said. “So I gave you a little something to relax you, and now you’re on my boat.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. The others are here, too. I know you wouldn’t want to leave them.”

“Nile! Book, Nicky—”

“We’re here,” Nile’s voice came, a little way’s away.

“Quynh, I can’t see anything.”

“I suppose I can light a candle, though it would be terrible if the ship set fire. It’s wooden, you see.”

A match struck, and a lantern glistened in the shadows.

“Why didn’t you light that before?” Andy asked, hearing the chains drag as she sat up. She was on a dusty, wooden floor. Now, she could feel that there was a gentle rocking. They were at sea.

“I haven’t needed light to see in centuries,” Quynh replied. “My eyes adjusted. I was so deep in the ocean. My bones were crushed every second, every moment. And they rebuilt themselves. My eyes transformed. Do they look different?”

Andy looked at her, directly at her, feeling as if she could weep. The woman she loved was nowhere to be found in the eyes she met—no warmth, no joy, no love for her in them. But her answer, spoken softly, was, “No, Quynh. You could never look different to me.”

Quynh looked away, and Andy followed her gaze—across the ship, where Nile and Nicky were both in chains. They, however, had the additional cover of cages. Andy looked back at Quynh with questions in her eyes. “They kept healing themselves and fighting back. We had to put them in these.”

“We?”

“Me and Booker. He’s a good assistant; I can see what you like about him.”

Andy closed her eyes, too disappointed and hurt to begin to process all she felt. “Where are we going?”

“To defeat an old enemy, as I told you,” Quynh answered. “Though the people responsible are gone, the town remains. And the cult,” she added, “the religious cult that—”

“You mean the church?” Andy balled up her fists in frustration. “You cannot seriously be considering attacking a church!”

“Why not? They would attack me, if they knew what I was. And you.”

“I don’t care,” Andy said, “what they would do. I don’t expect people to understand us, Quynh, and people always fear what they don’t understand. We should be focused on what good we can do in the world, not—not—”

“Not what?”

Andy was grasping for words that would convince Quynh without igniting her anger further—but all she could say was the truth. “Revenge.”

Quynh shook her head repeatedly, licking her lips. Her eyes had that wild look again. “No. I knew you wouldn’t understand, Andromecha. You never understand how the wicked of the world work. You aren’t like us—me, and Booker. We know how to take what’s ours.”

Booker…God. Andy closed her eyes. “How did you convince him to betray us?” Again.

“He doesn’t view it as a betrayal so much as a…sea change.”

“A sea change?”

“He’s tired of the way you’ve been living. He was glad to see me—to see someone who wanted what he wanted.”

“Which is?”

“To light the world on fire.”

“Quynh—”

“He’s in pain, Andy! And I am in pain! Don’t you see?”

“Don’t you see that I’m in pain, too?” Andy tugged uselessly at her chains, reaching for Quynh.

“We’re helping you help yourself. We don’t deserve to be in hiding. We deserve to be free, and to annihilate anyone who crosses us.”

“That’s absurd, and you know it.”

Quynh’s eyes were too alert, too full of the ideas that frightened Andy to her core. She said, “I know no such thing. And neither do you. We never will until we try.”

Nile and Nicky were quiet, listening to the others, until Quynh—frustrated with Andy’s anger and unwilling to compromise, left to go up to the top of the ship with Booker.

Nicky turned and looked at Nile. She said, “Don’t say it.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You were thinking it.”

“What?”

Nile huffed in frustration. “Joe was right.”

Nicky closed his eyes. It wasn’t quite what he’d expected her to say, but it was the truth. “I don’t think even he expected this.”

“Why didn’t he come with you, anyway?” Nile asked.

Nicky only shook his head.

“You weren’t with him?”

Another shake of the head.

“Did he know you were coming to Booker’s?”

“No.” Nicky paused, hating the words he was about to say. “I promised him I wouldn’t.”

For a moment, Nile stared at him, not comprehending. And then, her eyes widened for a second, and she said, “Okay. Wow.”

“I know,” Nicky said. “I was angry.”

“All because of Booker?”

He paused, closed his eyes, and nodded. Yes, it was all because of Booker. Nicky realized with a horrible, heart-rending pang that he had chosen wrongly. He had put Booker before Joe, when Joe would not have been so angry if he had not been hurting. Joe hadn’t been acting like himself, and Nicky should have recognized that and done something about it. He’d known Joe long enough to know when he needed help, when he was suffering silently.

“I didn’t understand what he was going through,” he finally said. “I blamed him for things that weren’t his fault.”

Nile, who’d been angry with him, too, only said, “He didn’t exactly make it easy.”

The two hadn’t known each other long, and Nicky couldn’t let Nile blame Joe without defending him. “Joe can be tough,” he said, “and even resentful at times. But nothing would have stopped him from going to Quynh, nothing in the world—if he’d been thinking clearly. I should have noticed it. He was suffering as much as any of us, without saying a word.”

Nile studied him for a moment in the dark. “You know him better than I do.”

“I know him better than anybody.” He paused, thinking about it, feeling the knife in his gut twist. “I’ve betrayed his trust.”

Nile said, with forced lightness, “He’ll get over it. I think we have bigger problems right now, anyways.”

She was right, of course. Who knew what would happen to them all, in Quynh’s captivity, being forced to do her bidding?

But Nicky’s mind couldn’t stop seeking Joe—Joe, who wouldn’t even know where they were. He would arrive at the rendezvous point in the afternoon and find himself abandoned. He would probably wait for some time, and then go to Booker’s, where Nicky had left his sword, and realize what Nicky had done. What they’d all done.

He closed his eyes again, sick with regret. He’d only wanted everyone to get along, and to be safe—but maybe he was driving the conflict as much as anybody by pretending it didn’t exist. When push came to shove, conflict was the brave way—the way to resolution. Nicky had abandoned it, and so had his team—and now, unless by some miracle, Joe could find a way to help them—they would all pay the price for it.


	5. Alone

Joe looked at his watch. At the clouds parting above a yellow sun overhead. At his shoes. At his watch again. The rendezvous should have taken place an hour ago, and he knew he was in the right spot. Where was everybody?

A light drizzle had started the morning off, but it was warmer and quite pleasant now, and it didn’t look suspicious to anyone, Joe was sure, that he’d been pacing through this particular area of a public park for over an hour now, watching everyone who went by and sighing.

Arranging a public rendezvous didn’t always go to plan, of course. When detection was highly likely, plans sometimes needed to change. Joe had waited hours for his comrades at times in the past, after separating for a little while for some mission or other. They couldn’t communicate in those cases, so trust was the most important factor to rely on. And trust, very unfortunately, was where they were most lacking at the moment.

Joe found a seat on a park bench—one that was out of the shade, in an inconspicuous spot. He reminded himself for the hundredth time to be patient, and not to overreact. Never mind that he had arrived to the park early, half-hoping that Nicky would do the same, that he would feel the same regret that Joe felt, the longing to reassure each other. Maybe he was still angry; that was fine. Joe knew what to do when Nicky was angry, and their fights never lasted too long. The waiting was the hard part, and today it was nearly impossible to bear calmly.

He stood up to pace through the park again, looking around whenever he heard a voice calling to another person, though nobody ever addressed him. On the remote chance that they were on the other side of the park, Joe permitted himself a longer walk after another hour, but even then, he was without luck. He returned to the rendezvous point, and didn’t even leave it to have dinner. He paced and sat and wandered and worried until the sun began to lower.

It was risky to leave; if he didn’t meet them here, he wouldn’t know how or where to meet them again. But the park would close eventually, and Joe couldn’t stay forever. So, reluctantly, he walked out.

His destination didn’t immediately occur to him, but it didn’t take long for him to recognize that his feet were moving purposefully in one direction. He was on the path to Booker’s apartment. That must be where the others were. Perhaps they had forgotten the rendezvous, or he’d misunderstood something. Or, even more concerningly, perhaps something had gone wrong. It wouldn’t help him find Nicky, but it was critical that he find somebody, and learn whether their plans had somehow changed without his knowing it. He could return to the park first thing in the morning; that would be better than nothing.

The apartment wasn’t far from the park, only two miles or so, and Joe arrived while the sun was still visible, though it had almost set, making everything red and orange. He knew the code to the building, even knew where the spare key was hidden—but when he reached apartment 21, the door was already unlocked. That was odd.

Hesitatingly, he pressed the door open and called, “Bonjour.” Nobody answered. He stepped inside, and at once, was overcome with alarm and dread. The floor, having been hastily washed, was very obviously stained with blood. Dark red towels filled the sink, and there were dishes dirty on the counter. No sign of anyone here now, but it was clear people had been here recently—and it was clear who the people were. There were weapons on the floor—Andy’s battle ax. Nile’s shotgun. And Nicky’s sword.

Nicky had been here.

And something had gone very, very wrong.

The signs were all there. First, the fact that they’d been somewhere and hadn’t done the slightest thing to cover their tracks. The fact that Nicky’d been with them at all, because Joe knew he wouldn’t have come there voluntarily after their fight. And then, the lingering signs of blood. Thoughts of Andy and her mortality haunted Joe’s mind, and he forced them out of his head. His team needed him.

He looked around. There were dishes in the sink, dirty. Some sort of sauce dried on. Pasta, maybe? Nothing smelled rotten, so they must have been used recently. The refrigerator was mostly empty, though, except for booze. He walked to a bedroom, where the bedding was mussed. A bathroom where there was a distinct stench of filth. He closed that door as he left it. Back to the main room. What had happened here?

His footsteps took him, almost unconsciously, to Nicky’s sword. He lifted it into his hands, because it belonged to his beloved, and he loved everything belonging to him. The thought that Nicky might be in danger again was as terrible as it was traumatic. Being captured and tortured for medical research had been painful on every level, but at least he and Nicky had been together. What was happening to Nicky and his friends now?

A sheet of paper, folded and stuck into the hilt of the sword, caught Joe’s eye. Nicky had left him a note. His fumbling fingers could barely retrieve it, but when he finally had it unfolded he saw—with some disappointment—that it wasn’t from Nicky. It was from Booker.

“I’m in over my head. I’m sorry. Quynh plans to attack the town centre in Stone Creek, and I’ve told her I’ll help her. We’ve captured the others and are traveling by boat. She plans to anchor in the north and hold Andy hostage so the others will attack the town. If they are captured, none of us will be safe. Come quickly.”

That was all it said. Joe stared at it for a moment, turning it over in his fingers. What in the world had just happened? Booker had betrayed them, again? But then sent Joe a note about it?

At least, Joe assumed the note was for him. There was no greeting that indicated otherwise. Probably, that was why it was in Nicky’s sword; Booker must have assumed—correctly—that when Joe did come, he wouldn’t be able to resist picking it up.

He had no time to consider his questions anymore—why Quynh was going on the attack, and why Booker was going along with it. He had to find his family, before it was too late.

Stone Creek, like all the little towns in its vicinity in the South of England, still looked quaint to a visitor’s eye. Nicky recognized it; they’d come here to retrieve Andy, under the cloak of night, after Quynh had been captured. They’d been unable to learn anything that would assist them in rescuing her, and they’d agreed never to return here again. The memories were too painful for Andy to endure. He wondered what Quynh would make of them now, if the same memories haunted her.

It was daylight, and she surprised her companions by having removed their chains. The doors to their cages, too, were open—and Nicky and Nile looked at one another in silent surprise before pushing their way out in the dim light of the port-side window.

“Booker is upstairs,” Quynh said calmly. “He will lead the way. Of course, if you do not go with him, there will be consequences.”

The chains, they saw, were on Andy’s arms. And there was a knife at her throat.

Nicky charged towards Quynh at once, but her hand tightened on the blade, and she said, “Another step, and she dies.”

Andy’s eyes were open; lucid and unafraid, she said, “Ignore her, Nicky.”

“I’m not bluffing.” Quynh’s voice was wild, a crazed edge to it.

“I know you’re not,” Andy said. “I don’t care if you kill me. Go ahead. We aren’t killing innocent people.”

Nicky said, “Of course, we aren’t.”

“So weak,” Quynh said, and she let the knife relax slightly in her hand. “I’m not afraid of you. Nobody should be. Timid and careful, always thinking through every step. Ineffective.”

Nicky grunted his displeasure, and Nile said, “Isn’t that better than blindly seeking revenge on people who aren’t your enemies?”

“Everyone is my enemy,” she said.

“Look, this is pointless. We aren’t going up there, and you can’t make us, so I don’t know why you’re keeping up with this whole tough-guy act.”

Quynh sized up Nile for a moment and said, “You remind me of Andy, when she was young. When there was still some fight—” accentuating the word as she drew the knife closer to her throat again, “in her.”

Andy said, “Strength means knowing when not to fight, too.”

Quynh scoffed. “That is not what strength means.” She looked at Nile. “And to answer your question, I can make you.”

“Oh, really?”

Nicky glanced at Nile, who was a woman he would never engage in a fight.

“Really,” Quynh said. “The bombs are in place; the fires are ready to ignite. I’ve done all the work for you. All that’s left is to set the spark—and Booker has agreed to do it himself.”

Nile and Nicky glanced at one another, then turned at once and ran up the steps to find Booker on the deck.

After Quynh dropped the knife from Andy’s neck again, Andy turned to her. “Then why bring us here? You’ve already done all the work.”

Quynh stared at her for a moment, then said, “To take the blame, obviously. I certainly wasn’t going to.”

Andy couldn’t hide her surprise; she drew in a sharp breath, and Quynh looked closely at her.

“You’re judging me.”

“This isn’t you,” Andy returned. “You would never do this.”

“I’m not who I used to be,” Quynh replied. “I’m not the woman you loved. That woman died centuries ago. She’ll never come back.”

Andy closed her eyes tightly. “Fine. But whoever you are now—you don’t have to be this person. You can be better than this.”

“What could be better than this?” Quynh asked. Andy opened her eyes to see her crazed, half-wild, and knew that there was nothing she could say.

Joe knew when he was in over his head, and he knew when he needed help. In fact, it was something he considered a great strength, cultivated over centuries—that he no longer soldiered on when he needed something, trying to get things done on his own. He knew that needing help wasn’t a weakness.

In fact, Nicky had taught him that particular lesson, centuries ago. He’d been working himself ragged after Quynh had disappeared, and gradually he’d stopped taking the time to do the things that made life worth living. He’d stopped helping Nicky cook; he’d stopped reading poetry; he’d even stopped drawing. Nicky had picked up on what he’d been missing, and one year, when the weather was particularly fine there, he’d brought Joe to Malta. Beautiful, peaceful, relaxing Malta. And they’d made love every day, two or three times, lazily enjoying each other as they hadn’t done in years. They’d eaten what was fresh and tender and delicious. They’d walked on the beach, and rolled in the sand, and danced with each other in the moonlight while Joe crooned melodies old and almost forgotten in Nicky’s ears. It had been the most beautiful, perfect, healing, wonderful time of his life. He still remembered it like it was yesterday—treasured memories that kept him moving forward through the mundanity of his days. He remembered, too, Nicky’s request, made when they were in captivity, to go there again.

And they would indeed go there. Joe would make sure of it. But the present crisis needed to be dealt with first.

He had, at least, the note from Booker to go off of. And, despite the continuing anger he felt towards him, he knew instinctively that he could trust this note. The problem with Booker was that he was short-sighted; he never thought anything through. The idea that he could have gotten himself into a bad situation with Quynh was certainly believable. He wished he knew more, but he would have to go off of what he had.

Joe had to act quickly. He wasn’t sure how long ago this letter was written—whether today or yesterday—and the amount of a headstart that Quynh had on him would make a difference in how he proceeded.

But nothing could be done without a phone, and as luck would have it, they had agreed not to use one on this mission. It was as old school as it gets, and they’d certainly done it before, but as Joe waited in line to buy a new burner, he found his five or six millionth reason to regret that they hadn’t simply come prepared.

When he got back to the apartment, he called the airline. Then he left a message for Copley, and while he waited for a return call—regretting, of course, that he would have to ditch this burner immediately now that he’d given away his phone number—he worked on cleaning up the blood. All the blood. Some part of him, the calloused, angry part, wished he could be sure it was all Booker’s blood and nobody else’s. He was the only one who deserved it.

Even after receiving the letter, it was clear to Joe that his feelings towards Booker weren’t going to change any time soon.

When Copley returned his call, Joe shared with him what he knew. Even about Quynh. He had to.

“God, she must be in terrible shape,” Copley said, his voice coming through staticky over the international call.

“Her body heals itself, same as ours,” Joe said.

“I mean psychologically,” Copley replied. “Guys tortured for a fraction of the time in the CIA come out bat shit crazy.”

“Interesting,” Joe said, “that you know that, but you still sent us off to be tortured by the highest bidder.”

“I didn’t know what would happen,” Copley replied.

“Your job is to know what will happen,” Joe answered. His tone was hard.

“Fair enough.”

He could have said more—about the money Copley made off of them, about the immorality of forcing them to serve the medical community, so called, against their will. But it didn’t matter right now. Joe said, “We don’t have time for this. My flight leaves soon. What should I expect when I get there?”

“Not sure. I’ll get eyes on it, though, and get back to you.” A pause. “I don’t know how I’ll reach you.”

“You won’t. I’ll call you when I land.” He’d already bought a plane ticket, rented a car, and cleaned up Booker’s apartment. All he’d have to do was buy another burner, and he’d be ready to go.

“Take care—” Copley started to say, but Joe hung up on him.

Exhausted and trepidatious, Joe left the apartment with its door unlocked, just as he’d found it; it was too suspicious to change something as significant as that. Just in case. The weapons, though, he hid in a utility closet. That would have to be good enough to protect their security for now.

On the flight, Joe worried about Nicky. He knew that he’d been captured, evidently, by Booker and Quynh, and he felt guilty that he hadn’t protected him. Leaving Andy with only Nile as her protector, too, seemed to have been a terrible miscalculation. At least there was nothing in Booker’s note indicating that Andy had been hurt or killed; that much of his worries, at least, he could abandon for now. There was certainly enough to worry about without it.

One question that still lingered was why he himself hadn’t been captured, too. It seemed careless to do a job that way—to capture all but one of the team. After all, that was how Nile had managed to rescue them from captivity six months ago, and only her newness to the team had saved her from an identical fate. Quynh knew about Joe, so it was odd that she hadn’t tried to capture him, too. He shouldn’t have been significantly harder to find than Nicky.

The flight had almost landed when another thought occurred to Joe, one that he felt almost traitorous for even considering. What if Nicky had gone to Booker’s of his own accord? Of course, he was allowed to do that—he was allowed to do whatever he wanted. Joe had known Nicky wasn’t in agreement with him about Booker’s banishment, anyway—but he’d voluntarily insisted that he wouldn’t go to Booker’s, and the idea of them all meeting up there without him gave him a sudden pang in his chest.

He wanted to think Nicky wouldn’t do that to him. He wanted to think none of them would—but he couldn’t quite convince himself of it. They hadn’t been in sync with one another when they’d arrived in Paris, and they weren’t in sync now. But Joe wouldn’t let himself think about that. He had to focus on the mission and getting his Nicky back—getting all of them back to safety. Otherwise, nobody would ever have a chance to make anything right. There was no sense in borrowing trouble from tomorrow; today was absolutely shitty enough as it was.


	6. A Window

This was a terrible idea. An insane, haphazard, half-assed, awful idea. And frankly, Nicky wasn’t quite sure who he should blame—so he settled for blaming himself.

They were sneaking into the town centre where one of three bombs were hidden, according to Booker’s information from Quynh. But Booker, who’d somehow managed to win Quynh’s fledgling trust by declaring himself to be as thoroughly traumatized by life as she was, wasn’t sure exactly how to deactivate them, only how to set them off.

“We aren’t a bomb squad,” Nile had reminded him in a harsh hiss of a whisper as he had guided them off the ship that morning.

“No, but we can’t die if one explodes,” he’d replied. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Innocent people could die,” Nicky replied. “We have to alert the authorities; they must evacuate the city. We can’t just—”

“No,” Booker said. “Anything we do now that draws attention to ourselves makes us vulnerable.”

“Funny to hear you talking about being vulnerable,” Nile had shot back.

And they’d bickered, and argued, and nothing had been decided except that they had to get off the ship before Quynh grew suspicious and did something even more insane than what she’d already done, kidnapping her friends and spiriting them away in the night to commit unspeakable acts of terror. Or, in this case, to prevent them. If only they had half a clue what they were doing.

And now, the plan—the idiotic plan—was simply to find the damn things, which Booker believed Quynh had bought from the black market using money she’d stolen on her journey north—and deactivate them, without having the first clue how, and without anybody noticing that they were doing it.

Nicky had been adamant that this wouldn’t work, that no plan with so little actual planning comprised in it was worthy of success at all. But he’d been overruled by the others, and by their argument that there was nothing else they could do. They had no way of contacting anyone to assist them, and if they revealed to anybody in the town that they had knowledge of the bombs, then their friends would be in danger, too. And helping Quynh, even now, must be a priority to Nicky. The others didn’t know her, but he did. He did, and he knew that there must yet be a way to help her. If only he could find what it was.

Joe, he thought bitterly, would have known what to do about Quynh. Joe could have diffused much or all of this. He was persuasive, well-spoken, intelligent. A leader. He had thought, more than once since Andy’s mortality had become known to them, that the next leader of their little group must be Joe. He would have a different style, but it would be the right one. He was strong, true, unwavering.

God, how Nicky missed him.

The trio walked through the town towards its centre, attempting to make themselves inconspicuous—but the harder they tried to fit in, the more they observed that this town was odd. People were dressed in an old-fashioned way. They were, every one of them, fair-skinned and fair-haired, and in fact many looked as though they were related to each other.

“They keep staring at me,” Nile whispered.

It was true; they were getting more attention than they should have already. This wasn’t good.

“Book, did Quynh say anything about the town? Its residents, its history?”

Nicky glanced at Booker when he didn’t answer right away and saw that he was smiling.

“Well?” Nile prompted.

Booker’s smile faded, and he said, “Just that it hadn’t changed much. She said it was strange back then—built far enough from its neighboring towns to be insular, unprogressive.”

“They see us as strangers,” Nicky said. “She must have seemed strange to them, as well.”

“They are definitely watching me,” Nile said then, looking towards the others. “This isn’t a regular mission, Booker.”

Of course, it wasn’t. But none of them had realized it until it was too late. The town was on high alert, watching for strangers, for a threat. They noticed it simultaneously, with no time to react, no time to warn each other, no time defend themselves. An SUV on the road coming towards them. Another from behind.

They were being ambushed. Again.

“It’s child’s play, Joe.”

Copley’s voice came through clearer on the new burner phone Joe had picked up. Less crackly. Or maybe, having been awake all night and dogged with memories of the angry words he and his friends had hurled at each other last time they were together, the static of a poor phone connection was irrelevant by comparison. Dissonance was a language Joe spoke constantly in his own mind.

It took a moment for the words to register, and another for Joe to respond. “What is?”

“The plan. Quynh’s plan. Total amateur job.”

“Of course it was,” Joe replied, feeling impatient—partially with Copley and partially with himself. How could it be anything but amateurish? “She’s been in a box under the ocean for centuries. What does she know about modern weaponry, modern warfare? She doesn’t even have any money, or know how money works anymore. Or the internet. Or anything.”

Why hadn’t he and his friends realized this? Quynh wasn’t threatening, not really. At least, not to the world at large. She hardly knew how to load and fire a gun, let alone plant and arm a bomb. She might have visions of grand destruction, but they were illusions, at best.

No, she was threatening—wasn’t she? Not because of what she could do, the mark she could make in this world; she was uniquely threatening to Joe and his friends. To the band of immortals who had loved her too much to acknowledge that she was badly damaged, beyond anything they could repair.

“She bought a few simple bombs from an underground market. Looks like she killed the guy who sold them to her, though we can’t prove it.” Copley added grimly. “Our team was able to locate the devices, and we’re confident that they wouldn’t have detonated properly anyway, based on what we found.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

Joe nodded curtly, though Copley couldn’t see him. “Booker would be able to confirm that’s all there is.”

“I know. They’ve got him in custody.”

A sense of satisfaction grew in Joe’s gut, hearing that—though he knew that Booker was in a situation far more benign than the one he’d once placed Joe and Nicky in. “Good. Did he talk?”

“A little. He didn’t believe that they’re with me. The agents who arrested him. The others with him were more forthcoming, but nobody would disclose Quynh’s location, so we’re still—”

“Quynh isn’t in custody?”

“No,” Copley said, and with a clear note of regret in his tone, he added, “and not Andy, either.”

Shit. “Is Quynh with Andy?”

“I’m not sure. Probably.”

Joe remembered Booker’s note, that holding Andy hostage was key to enacting Quynh’s plan. He felt his hands squeezing too tightly on the steering wheel of his rental car. Painfully. His knuckles turn red, and everywhere else is white, white as the boiling anger bubbling up inside him. He never should have agreed to split up from his friends. He never should have let Andy out of his sight. Nobody was safe in this situation, and Andy least of all—Andy, who would never have another chance if Quynh decided to make good on her threats. Though, Joe couldn’t quite distinguish from Booker’s note exactly what the threat had been. If Quynh knew that Andy was mortal now, would she dare to end her life? The Quynh Joe knew couldn’t have imagined doing something so drastic, so final, so violent.

Joe tried to imagine doing something like that himself. Hurting Nicky. Ending him. It was an absurd thought, impossible for comprehension. It almost made him laugh. It was the thought of Nicky—his odd little smile that looked like home to Joe, his noble-looking nose, his soft lips—that made Joe come back to himself. This was significant; this mattered. Nicky could ground him when everything in his universe felt completely adrift.

“Give me the address of where they were taken.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? I’m on the way to Stone Creek.”

“Your friends are in custody, Joe. They’re accomplices to a known terrorist.”

“Excuse me?”

“They planted bombs all over the city!”

“They didn’t,” Joe said, with an exasperated reach for patience. “Quynh did. They came to stop her.”

“Their duty as citizens is to report something as significant as a bomb threat to the authorities as soon as they’re aware of it.”

“Citizens,” Joe sputtered, angry again, “citizens of what? We don’t have a duty to anybody, any government, any entity anywhere. Ever. You know that. And your duty to us,” he added pointedly, “is to help us keep our identities secret instead of blowing us up in the headlines for all the world to see.” He paused, replaying Copley’s words in his head. “A known terrorist? Really?”

“We just need them to tell us where Quynh is, so we can get her into custody and get her some help. That’s all. Then we’ll release them.”

Of course, that’s what Copley wanted to do. But who knew what anybody else would do? Naïve hope was maybe as much a strength as a weakness when it came to Copley.

Joe couldn’t suppress a groan as he answered, “They’ll never tell you.” As he spoke, he felt some of the fight seep out of him. “Being in custody, being at the mercy of ‘the authorities,’ as you called them, is a fate worse than death to us.”

Worse than death. Joe heard a hollow laugh escape his lips at the turn of phrase. Death wasn’t even really that bad, most times. Just a blink, a quick sharpness. Healing is worse than death, frankly—all those disparate pieces bleeding themselves back together. To Booker, he thought fleetingly, living forever is worse than death. He didn’t intend to feel the pang of sympathy that shuddered through him at that thought.

“Well, we have to do something about Quynh,” Copley said.

Joe closed his eyes for a second, wished he could keep them closed for longer without endangering himself and the others, the non-immortals, traveling down the same road.

“They aren’t her accomplices, and you know it,” Joe finally said. “They wanted to help her. And there’s nobody else in the world to do it besides us. Think about it. We have thousands of years of age between us—she’s older than me and Nicky, even. Everyone who would counsel her is a child to her. She has nobody that can relate to her, nobody that can understand her.” He sighed. “Except us.”

It felt important, in that moment. Quynh couldn’t be separated from them. They couldn’t be separated from her. The distance these past several centuries had never numbed all the pain they’d felt, and for Andy, it had done something to her so severe and final, so damning, and yet so gradual that Joe hadn’t even realized it had happened. Not until Booker had sensed it, had tried to take matters into his own hands to solve what he perceived as the universal misery of their shared situation—

No. No, he couldn’t think along those lines. He couldn’t pity Booker; not now, not when his actions had led to irreparable damage in the lives of all those most dear to Joe. And in Joe’s life. He couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t devastated, still, by what he and Nicky had gone through. He couldn’t pretend that he didn’t experience angst whenever he was near Nile, remembering that she had saved them all, though she hardly knew them. That every time he disagreed with her wish to show leniency to Booker, he was disagreeing with his rescuer, his savior.

It wasn’t fair. Nothing that had happened was fair.

But unfairness is everywhere. Like weather, a freak act of nature, the way tragedy clings to some and evades others. And Joe had evaded so much, for so long. He’d allowed himself to believe he was invincible, but that had never been true. The mere memory of Quynh’s suffering should have shown him that, but it never had, quite. He hadn’t been equipped to feel the way he’d felt at the mercy of his captors. He hadn’t known how to cope with the lingering feelings of fear, of powerless. He hadn’t even known how to name them. Months passed, and he still couldn’t. Even now.

“Tell me where they are,” Joe said again, after a long silence during which he could find no peace.

Copley sighed before sharing the address, and there was something in the sound of it that made Joe think he’d intended all along to tell him—he just wanted him to work for it first. Or maybe, he had hoped to get Joe to confess Quynh’s location, and only now realized that Joe didn’t know it.

Whatever. It didn’t matter. Joe knew where to go, and he punched the address into his GPS unit and reminded himself, again and again, that his anger would help nothing.

“I don’t know what’s taking so long.”

Quynh’s voice was beautiful, even now, after drowning a few million times. It was sing-songy, melodic, airy. It reminded Andy of birdsong. Always had. She blinked rapidly, not letting the tears that threatened to gather escape her eyes. She was stronger than this. Time had made her strong. She’d already lost Quynh. There was nothing to grieve now.

“Maybe they’ve already done it,” Andy replied.

“No, I would have heard something,” Quynh answered absently.

“We’re in the harbor,” Andy said. “Unless you were setting off a really fucking enormous bomb, I don’t think the sound of the explosion would reach us here.”

Quynh glanced at her, unamused. “Maybe I did.”

Andy met her gaze unflinchingly, and when Quynh turned back to the little window in the ship’s hull, she felt her eyes stinging again. Why did it still hurt like this?

Maybe because before today, Andy had held out hope. That when she saw Quynh again, things would be different. That they would be able to forgive each other, though neither had done anything wrong. At least until today, neither had. Now, Andy was sure that Quynh was spiraling toward her own unavoidable destruction, and that nothing Andy could do would ever be able to make things right again.

“I suppose they might have tried to fight him. Booker,” she added, by way of explanation, not bothering to look at Andy. “I’m confident that he was equally eager to make the people in this town pay. Though, they haven’t harmed him. But he wanted to make somebody pay, for something. It was all I ever dreamt about. His pain, and how somebody needed to pay.” She paused and drew a lock of hair through her fingers, absently. Twirled it, again and again.

“He’s a very transactional thinker,” Andy filled in, probably unhelpfully, because it gave her something to think about, something besides the sheen of Quynh’s hair, almost iridescent in the wavering light of the watery window. That made her think of something else, and she said, “Doesn’t it bother you, Quynh?” Quynh finally turned to look at her, and Andy clarified, “The boat?”

“Oh.” Quynh looked away again. “No, actually. It was my home, for years and years and—” She paused. “I don’t know why it doesn’t bother me. You’re right. It should. But it’s familiar to me now; I know just what to expect from it. The pressure…the shifts…the waves.”

There are no waves, Andy thinks, down where Quynh was—submerged beneath immeasurable masses of burning, salt-laden water—but she doesn’t say so. How can she know what it was like, so deep, in a box, in the sand, year after year? It’s remarkable that she broke free at all, and Andy remembers like a shock the suddenness of Nile’s scream that night, the realization that the box had finally rusted. But what had pushed it apart?

“I wonder where the waves came from,” Andy said hesitantly.

“The waves?”

“That released you.” Breathlessly, wondering if “released” is even quite the word.

“Oh, probably from whoever is doing this,” Quynh said, still not giving Andy the privilege of seeing her face. She waved her hand vaguely in the air, craning her neck to see further out the window, above the splashing waves. “Maybe I should go up on the deck after all…” she muttered.

“Whoever is doing what?” Andy said, a little too loudly as the hair on the back of her neck, inexplicably, stood up.

Impatiently, Quynh bit out the words, “Making us immortal.”

“What are you talking about?” Andy’s speech faltered a little. “Nobody’s doing it. It’s just the way it is.”

“Maybe,” Quynh replied. “Not a person, or a being, but a—a force of some kind. The same force that makes the dreams seem so real to us.”

“The dreams are real,” Andy said in reply—but she felt confused. Truly confused, like she hadn’t felt in centuries. Immortality was a reality that Andy long ago ceased to question. But what else had there been for Quynh to do for hundreds of years? Just drown, and drown…and question. Suddenly, Andy felt an urgency she had never experienced before—not to do, but to know. To know what was causing all this. The same question, she thought fleetingly, that probably motivated Booker when he’d betrayed them all. But she was asking it without agenda, even without fear—a mere curiosity, and with the knowledge that her time to learn the answer was running short. “You think a force is controlling us?”

“Not control,” Quynh said. “Create. We were made this way. We have—” she hesitated.

Andy could remember the word Nicky liked to use for it. “Destiny.”

Quynh gave her another brief glance. “Fate.”

The two words were so similar, yet so different—one meaning something promising, the other damning. Of course, Nicky would think of destiny. Nicky, who woke up daily in the arms of his beloved, who spoke of love as easily as he breathed, who had lived for nearly a thousand years and never been without it.

“Let’s go up and see,” Quynh finally said, and she took the chain that was holding Andy to the ship’s wall and hesitated, hands just ready to release the lock—then she looked at Andy, frowning, and slid the key into her pocket. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll go. You stay.”

Andy hadn’t expected much better, realistically. She let herself be disappointed for only a moment, then drank in the darkness and solitude of her own underwater prison. She had to find a way to help Quynh overcome this. The fight in her eyes may be faded, but it wasn’t extinguished yet.

They’d been in a board room for hours. Hours, and their resolve never faltered. But Nile felt it wearing on all of them, and on Nicky in particular. They hadn’t discussed it in advance—their resolve not to disclose the location of the ship that had brought them here. Of their friend, who had tried to do terrible things. Who had endured terrible things.

Nile had to remind herself that Quynh was not her friend. It felt, so oddly, like they all knew each other—the shared burden of a terrible secret—but they didn’t.

Nonetheless, they had all lied for her, that they knew nothing of her whereabouts, that she hadn’t come with them here, that she probably wasn’t even nearby.

Nile was a fine liar—not that it was a particularly good skill to have, but when she felt it was necessary to guard an important secret, she was able to do it. Booker was obviously great at it, too—annoyingly so. But Nicky wasn’t. He clammed up rather than speaking, and when the agents interviewing them finally left them in the dimly lit room at what Nile presumed must be lunch time, Nicky hardly seemed to notice. He had a faraway look on his face, and he gazed at the door as though he wasn’t really seeing it.

Booker was angry, was ranting something about there being no just cause to hold them here. Nile agreed, but only said, “Complaining isn’t going to help anything.”

It wasn’t what Booker wanted to hear, and so he ignored it. Nile groaned inwardly. She was hungry, and tired, and frustrated—and a big part of that was Booker’s fault, in her eyes. But he hadn’t apologized, really. No, Booker’s main form of communication today seemed to be to complain. Maybe Joe hadn’t been wrong about keeping this asshole away after all.

Probably just the hunger talking. But still.

As if summoned by her thought of him, the door creaked open, and Joe appeared on the other side of it—calm, quiet, as if nothing was wrong.

“Okay,” he said softly, “I’ve knocked out the guards in the hallway. We have five minutes at most. Come on.”

“What?” Nile stared at him, astonished, but both Nicky and Booker instantly sprang to their feet to obey him. She got to her own feet pretty quickly, too, after it occurred to her that they were probably always doing things like this for each other. Helping each other out of jams. That is, when one of them hadn’t gotten them into trouble in the first place.

The hallway was clear, as Joe had said. There were two guards, and evidently Joe had used a gas to knock them out. It was already dissipating in the air, but Nile could smell it, could feel it just vaguely threatening to take her under as she passed by, before her body got with the picture and healed itself.

Though this gift/curse had required her to give up almost more than she could bear, Nile had to admit that there were some definite perks to being immortal.

They were in some government building, and it had been something of a drive out of town to get there, but it’s not like they were blindfolded or something on the way in. It looked just the same—a brick building nestled in a thick forest, about half a mile in from a major highway, the traffic of which could be heard faintly over the rustling wind in the trees. Joe had driven here, and his car was small, a sedan. Just enough space for the four of them.

Nile was hungry and anxious, and the height of the sun told her she was right about lunch time. They approached the car as Joe led them, nobody saying a word, tense and serious and knowing that they had to get somewhere private before they could talk, and the car wasn’t probably the place for that.

At least, Nile had assumed they all knew the car wasn’t the place for that. But apparently Joe didn’t, because as soon as they reached it, he nodded at Nicky—who, probably from force of habit, was climbing into the passenger’s seat—and said, “Let Booker have it.”

“What?” Nicky frowned up at him.

“Booker’s sitting there,” Joe said. “I need to talk to him.”

Nile looked at Booker anxiously, but he said, “It’s fine,” and walked around the car.

Nicky lingered a moment longer before he walked to the back, opening his car door and scooting in. He let it slam a little too hard.

When they were all seated, an uneasy tension filled the car, but it was broken when Joe said to Booker, “Thanks for your note.”

There was hardly any inflection when he said it, and Booker turned to him, apprehension visible in his eyes even from the back seat, and said, “Thanks for coming.”

“I’m sorry, what? You wrote him a note? You…invited him?”

Booked glanced at Nile through the rearview mirror. “I didn’t know how else to deal with Quynh. I had to play along with her so I could even get the opportunity to write the note, and then, I had to find a way to get us help without putting Andy in any further danger—”

Nile shook her head to clear it. “You guys were in contact all along? How long have you known about—”

“No,” Joe said calmly, shaking his head, “he left me a note in Paris. Inside the hilt of Nicky’s sword, which was in his apartment, where I can only presume you were all having a lovely reunion. I came there,” he added, “after the missed rendezvous.”

The words were spoken with too much levity. They sounded almost like a joke, but they weren’t a joke. Nile looked at Nicky instinctively—saw him close his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose. But he said nothing.

“Okay,” Nile said, feeling somewhat like the wind had been let out of her sails. She wanted to blame somebody, but it didn’t feel like there was anybody to blame. Maybe blame had been one of the terrible things that led them here.

Scratch that. It definitely had.

“Where are we going?” Booker asked after a moment.

“Stone Creek, I guess,” Joe answered. “I don’t know exactly where; I was assuming you’d tell me.”

They were all quiet for a moment.

“You’ve talked to Copley?” Booker said hesitantly.

“Yep.”

“And you know about the—”

“Bombs? Sure. Amateur job, he said. As though he was disappointed in her or something,” Joe added, laughing a little under his breath, though Nile was sure she heard no real mirth or humor in the sound.

“We didn’t tell them where she is,” Booker added softly.

“He said you wouldn’t.” This was spoken in a different tone, a softer one, and some of the tension in the car seemed to dissipate ever so slightly.

“Are you still in touch with him?” Nile asked after no further comment came from the others.

“I called him on my burner before coming to find you,” Joe said. “I won’t call him again. Not now, anyway. I think he just wants to help at this point,” he added, and now his eyes met Nile’s through the mirror, “but he can’t help with this.”

Nile nodded in understanding, and Joe’s eyes slid away—but a moment later they were back. This time, they fell on Nicky. Nile turned her head to see that his eyes were still closed. Joe looked away, too, back to the road, and Nile felt an ache in her heart, completely out of nowhere. They were still fighting. Of course, they were—nothing had changed since she’d seen them a few mornings ago outside the airport.

It wasn’t her business. But they’d all been living together for more than six months now, and she’d gotten somewhat used to them as a pair—the stability of having this pillar of constant support and faithfulness in their midst, steadying everything. Even when nothing felt solid anymore, after what Booker had done, there was something concrete in their presence—these two, in love for centuries, never wavering.

It certainly seemed like they were wavering now, though, and it hurt Nile in the same place that it used to hurt if her parents argued, or if one of her friends at school was on the outs with the others. That feeling of not knowing whose side to be on, because you’re on both sides, and that apparently means neither side, so now you’re just this lonely island of a thing waiting for a resolution you can’t control.

It didn’t feel quite like that, but it was close. And she didn’t like it.

The rest of the drive was quiet, but not silent. Every now and then, Joe or Booker would speak about something quietly, and Nile would catch snatches of it—usually either directions or observations about their setting. Why this circumstance, of all things, would lead to something of an uneasy truce between the two was just beyond Nile’s grasp, but she didn’t weigh in on it. She was too concerned about Nicky, who still hadn’t opened his eyes, though she could tell he wasn’t asleep.

She felt a kind of kinship with him, almost—as though he felt like he was on the neutral side of an unwanted conflict, too. But he wasn’t. He was, last Nile had seen them together, one of the chief aggressors. It had been Joe, back then, who had wanted reconciliation.

When they neared the docks, all starving, and Joe said, “You guys probably want to eat first, huh? Let’s stop for something,” Nicky finally opened his eyes. Nile hadn’t really stopped watching him, so she saw the expression of gratitude there, and then she realized it—Nicky wasn’t neutral. He was squarely on Joe’s side. It made her understand something in Andy, and something in herself, too.

Joe parked the car and walked inside a sandwich shop to buy them some food; the others waited in the car. Except Nicky—he waited until Joe had placed the order, then slipped out of the car without saying a word to the others. Nile watched him, curiously. He came up behind Joe, stood quietly in his shadow, and when Joe turned—presumably to ask what he was doing—Nicky answered briefly, Joe nodded, and they both turned back to the counter in silence. The food was made to order, so it would be a wait, and after a minute, Nicky seemed discouraged. He turned and walked out of the restaurant again. Nile turned her face away, not wanting to be caught staring when the car door opened. But it didn’t open. She looked up again.

Joe had come after him, was opening the door of the shop and reaching for Nicky’s arm, wordlessly pulling him into a tight embrace. Nicky looked like he could have cried, and for a moment he just buried his face in Joe’s neck. They didn’t indulge for long; not here in the open, where nothing was safe. And there was too much left to discuss, to resolve, and no time with which to do it. But it was enough, in that moment, and Nile turned away again, too comforted to properly understand how hopeful it all made her feel—that anger and love could coexist.

That one was decidedly more important than the other.


	7. Chains

Booker let the food settle like a brick in his gut. He hadn’t stopped feeling guilty for what he’d done to Joe and Nicky—for their suffering, in particular, above that of the others. Those two were held in captivity, investigated, tortured. Forced to witness each other’s torture. It hadn’t been an outcome that Booker had had the foresight to anticipate. He’d felt so eager for answers, so desperate to find a solution to his own continual mental anguish that the unintended consequences of his searching were perfectly obscured to him—until, of course, he had come face to face with them.

What a fool he’d been. What had he thought “medical research” would entail for people like them? It was utter nonsense to have dreamed of answers, of relief, from such a quarter. But he’d been desperate, too desperate to think clearly, and his friends had been the sufferers for it.

Eating a sandwich purchased for him by Joe, and observing, as he now did, that the order Joe had made was exactly what he liked, was its own kind of torture.

“Listen,” Booker said, a sudden urgency to his voice as he turned in his seat. Joe had traded seats with Nile, and he and Nicky were together, albeit on opposite sides of the car, with their sandwiches unwrapped on the seat between them. Nicky had one leg stretched across the floor, Booker noticed, as though he was reaching for a touch from Joe, but uncertain if he could claim it.

They looked up at Booker. “Yeah?” Joe said around a bite of sandwich.

“I think…” What? What did he think? He hesitated at the look in their eyes—Nicky calm but weary, and Joe utterly unreadable, except that he was stern. “I think I need help,” he said finally, the words cascading out in a heap, inelegant and shameful as they were.

Joe set his sandwich down. “Yeah,” he said again—this time not a question.

Booker wanted to apologize again—or, maybe, for the first time. When they’d discussed this after their capture, Booker had done nothing but defend himself. He’d wanted to, if he could, that he was in anguish, that nothing—no time or distance or purpose or achievement or praise—could replace what he had lost.

God, what a weakling he had turned out to be. He was a soldier once, and brave. He’d taken pride in how little he needed in the way of worldly comforts, though it was highly unnecessary to harbor any feelings of the kind. French soldiers were treated well, with good salaries and good meals. And his wife had loved him, and his children had loved him, and his parents had loved him—and what was it all, in the end, if not a perfectly soft, cushy existence that made him incapable of withstanding the assault of misfortune that immortality would necessitate he witness? First, that his wife would die—and then his children—and last of all, centuries from now if he was particularly unlucky, himself.

And Andy. And Joe and Nicky, probably, before him. That the thought of their deaths injured him was enough to prove that he cared more for them than he’d realized when he arranged all this; that amid the sorrow of immortal suffering, their friendships were among his chief consolations.

Joe had drawn him a picture of his wife, once, when they had first discovered each other, and Booker was still deeply grieving her death. It was a lovely image, the way she had looked in her youth. Booker had described it to Joe in such detail that it was almost like looking at her portrait—the one that had once hung in their home, a wedding gift to him commissioned by her father. The picture was at Booker’s apartment now, in his sock drawer, bundled up with various other little treasures. He and Joe had been closer once, and at the greater distance that separation had provided, Booker could see clearly how he’d pushed his friend away.

“What kind of help?” Nile finally said when her sandwich was polished off.

Booker took a deep breath. Part of him didn’t know, but part of him did, and another part just didn’t want to say it. “With…” he gestured listlessly with his hand. “All this.” He paused, glancing at her apologetically. “I know, I’ve had hundreds of years to get used to it all, and you’re only just beginning. I know I should be—”

“There’s nothing you should be,” Nicky said quietly. Booker looked towards him again. “If you feel you need something, then you can ask for it. If it’s possible, I know we’ll do whatever we can for you.”

He seemed to be speaking for everyone when he said this, and nobody contradicted him—not even Joe. Booker glanced at him when he perceived a slight movement from him, and noticed that Joe had moved his leg, too—touching Nicky’s, just slightly, at the ankle.

“I have no right to ask you for anything, after what I did,” Booker said, looking down.

“Maybe not,” Joe replied, “but we’ve invited you to do so, anyway.”

They waited, and Booker swallowed the lump in his throat. It didn’t do any good, rising again as soon as he opened his mouth to speak. “I know,” he said, “there must be a price. For what I did. There absolutely must. I—” he closed his eyes, too regretful to see Nicky and Joe, even peripherally in the seat behind him. “What I did was reprehensible. I was selfish, completely selfish. To trust me now would be absurd,” he added, feeling every bit of the truth of those words. He didn’t even trust himself.

“Hmm.” Joe seemed to respond without meaning to, and it was clearly a sound of agreement. No one defended Booker at it, and he would have been astonished if they had.

“But if there’s any punishment, any price,” he went on, hearing the weakness in his own voice and hating it. Why had destiny or fate or whatever it was chosen him for this life? He was clearly too weak for it, never deserving of anything but the humblest of mortal deaths. “If there is any way,” he went on, more softly, “that I can endure that punishment without being…isolated.” His voice cracked, and he had to pause, collecting himself.

With so little emotion, not even anger, that it sincerely surprised Booker, Joe said, “We can discuss it.”

Booker was so astonished that he looked up, opening his eyes and finding Joe’s on him in answer, perfectly calm. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Nicky or Nile; he didn’t need to. Neither were as angry as Joe had been, and now, Joe seemed to have let that anger go, at least in part.

“We have to figure out a way to help Quynh first,” Joe said. “Or,” he added, frowning a little as he looked at Nicky, “simultaneously, maybe. I don’t know,” he added, in answer to Nicky’s unspoken question, eyes a little wide. “It’s a discussion.”

It seemed some kind of silent agreement passed between them. Joe looked up at Nile, who was turned almost completely backwards in her seat, and she nodded slightly. Joe sighed. “Let’s focus on Quynh and Andy for now. What’s the situation on this ship?”

Booker explained it, eager to prove to Joe in any way he could that he was part of the team, that he wanted to help. That he was sorry, had been sorry for months, and would do anything his friends wanted him to do if it meant they would welcome him back to the only family he’d known for centuries.

“She’ll still have Andy below deck,” Booker explained, “in chains. There were cages, too,” he added, with a remorseful glance at Nile,” but I don’t think she’d put Andy in one.”

“Why not?”

“They were uncomfortable,” Booker replied. “Not sharp, but just shy of it, too small and with bars protruding. Nicky and Nile would have bruises,” he added in a softer tone, “if they couldn’t heal themselves.”

Joe seemed to reach for Nicky’s hand without even intending to, but Nicky was instantly receptive, enclosing Joe’s hand in both of his and holding tightly, his whole posture drawing towards him. Funny, how irritated Booker had been with them, though they seldom showed much overt physical affection to each other when others were present. Just knowing they had each other had made him resent them, and he’d wanted to make them suffer for it—until he had made them suffer, of course, and then, he realized that it was never what he’d wanted.

“Do you think she knows you betrayed her? Quynh,” he added, when Booker hesitated, thinking for a moment that he’d betrayed too many people to keep straight, lately.

“Yes,” Booker said, “she must. She has anxiety,” he added, “being near people. She planted the bombs at night, but she wanted to detonate them in the daytime, when the most people could be harmed by them. Only, she was too anxious to be in a crowd. That’s why she needed me.”

“Copley was pretty sure they wouldn’t have detonated either way,” Joe said, using his free hand to grab his sandwich again. He chewed another bite, thoughtfully. “Maybe you can…I don’t know, pretend that you tried but it didn’t work.”

Nile raised her eyebrows in a manner that clearly conveyed she was unimpressed with this idea.

Joe shrugged. “I’m just putting ideas out there. The best we can hope for at this point, I think, is getting Andy safely extracted. After that, we’ll see how things go.”

“Okay,” Nile said, “but what if she doesn’t buy that? Which, by the way, I definitely wouldn’t, because if we’d just gone off to detonate the stupid things and it didn’t work, we would have returned—” she glanced at the console on the car to see the time, “like, three hours ago at the latest.”

“We could just tell her the truth,” Booker said, though he was pretty sure that would be the wrong choice—too simple, not sensitive enough to what Quynh had been through.

Nile seemed to prefer it, though. “We’ve all already tried talking to her, except for Joe,” she said, “and from what Andy told me,” glancing at Joe, “you two were really close.”

“We were.”

Nile nodded. “Well, then maybe you could try. You could, you know. Talk her off the ledge, so to speak.”

“I don’t know that I could,” Joe said. “Of course, I would try anything. Anything, to help her. But I don’t know how many chances we’ll have.” Looking at Booker, he added—in a way that felt somehow apologetic to him, “I don’t know what I would say. I can’t relate to her, and she’s hurting so much.”

Booker heard himself reply, “Sometimes wanting to help is enough.” He cleared his throat, which had suddenly become tight and clogged. “It matters.”

Joe nodded, unemotional as usual, and glanced at Nicky, who still held his hand in a vice grip. In that gentle voice he seemed to reserve just for him, Joe said, “What do you think?”

“I don’t want to put undue pressure on you, or on her,” Nicky replied softly. “This plan was preposterous, and I think deep down, Quynh knows it. What could be said at this point that would allow her some semblance of dignity? That, too, I think, is essential to her recovery.”

Joe smiled a little, then looked back at the others. His smile fell, and he hesitated. “She knows what you did, Booker?”

“What do you mean?”

“To us.” There was no anger in it. Just a question, asked with as little bitterness as Joe could manage. “She knows about why we banished you?”

Booker looked down, feeling his face burn. “Yes.”

“Then maybe it should be you who talks to her.”

He looked at Joe again. “Why?”

“Because you can relate.”

“Can I?” Booker was still embarrassed, still guilty and on edge, but when he could work up the nerve to look at the others, he saw that they weren’t angry with him, particularly, at that moment. They seemed curious to know if he could help; they seemed to understand what Joe meant better than Booker did. Or, better than he would let himself.

“You said you needed help,” Joe said quietly. “So does she. She was robbed of everything. She can’t see a way forward anymore. She’s been lonely, so lonely, for centuries.” He nodded towards Booker, and for the first time, Booker let himself think maybe he could be forgiven, after all. “You know how that feels.”

Booker closed his eyes, not wanting the tears that were threatening there to burst free. When he had command of himself again, he looked at Joe and said, “I can try. I can certainly try, if you think—”

“I do,” Joe said.

“Me, too,” Nile said, and Booker looked at her and felt her confidence in him—a trust that was undeserved, certainly, and unpracticed, but nonetheless his for the taking, if he could accept it. They all seemed sure, and if they believed he could do it, then maybe he could.

“What about Andy?”

“We still need to get her out,” Nicky replied, “but I’m not convinced that Quynh would hurt her.” Looking at Nile, he clarified—as though Nile hadn’t picked up on it by now, when she almost certainly had—“They were lovers.”

“I know,” Nile said. “I mean, I figured.” With defiance, she added, “I don’t think that means Andy is safe with her, necessarily.”

“No,” Nicky said, “it doesn’t. She could certainly still hurt her, if she was provoked enough.”

“Tell me more about the ship,” Joe answered, eyes on Booker again.

“Um.” Booker cleared his throat. “Well, it’s wooden. Old. On the small side. There’s a level below deck, where we were.”

“It’s powered by?”

“Coal.”

“Ah.” He glanced at Nicky. “Come up from underneath, maybe?”

Nicky’s eyes lit up with recognition, and he says, “Yes, yes—Norway, 1685.”

“I thought it was 1695,” Joe said, and Nicky opened his mouth to argue before rolling his eyes and snorting when Joe chuckled, clearly teasing him.

“What was Norway 1685?” Nile asked, sounding only a little bit annoyed. “God, you guys and your code names for your rescue plans.”

“You’ll learn them,” Joe said, a smile still etched on his face from having made Nicky laugh. 

“We had to rescue a hostage from a wooden ship, and we wanted to do it unnoticed, so Joe found the mechanism that powered the ship and climbed up through it.”

“That sounds…really gruesome, actually,” Nile said.

Joe shook his head and said, “Well, it was somewhat gruesome, but that ship was in motion, so I kept getting flipped under by the rotors. That wouldn’t happen with an anchored ship, so. I’m not concerned.”

“I can do it,” Nicky offered.

But Joe answered, “No, I’ve done it before. It’s fine. But we’ll need other contingencies. One of you should come with Booker onto the ship and try to get between her and Andy, if you can. If she’s still threatening her, that is.”

“I’m sure she would be,” Nile said, shivering a little. “She was totally unstable.”

Joe nodded. “Do you want to go with Booker, then?”

Nile was already nodding, and Booker wasn’t surprised. She had formed a strong attachment to Andy in a short time; that much had been obvious to Booker as soon as the women had reached his apartment days before. Nile saw Andy as a mother figure, and she wasn’t ready to let her go yet.

That left Nicky, and he said to Joe, with total submission to his ideas which, frankly, wasn’t usually his style, “What should I do, Yusuf?”

“Did you take a boat to shore?”

“We did.”

“How about you keep a lookout from a short distance? You can intervene if anything unexpected happens.”

Booker almost said, “Like what?” but then, he supposed, there could be no answer to that question that didn’t instantly disprove itself by being expected, after all. Meanwhile, Nicky looked at Joe with an expression of mild hurt for being relegated to this role, only for a moment, before it softened. It was obvious, probably to everybody, that Joe wanted to keep Nicky safe. He was still anxious, after what Booker had done. Of course, he was.

Maybe this was how Booker could make amends. Begin to, anyway.

The sunlight was piercing when the car reached the docks where, about half a mile off the shore, the ship Quynh had commandeered was anchored. The rowboat they’d used to come to shore was still bobbing near a short, gray-ish dock—the oldest and most decrepit of the docking options available to them, and the one where they had assumed it was least likely to be stolen. It hadn’t been, obviously, so they could go right to the ship—and nobody saw any reason for delay.

“I’ll jump out when we’re nearly there,” Joe said. The boat had been crowded this morning with three of them, but with four, it was almost ready to sink. After a few minutes of struggle, Joe said, “Never mind. I’ll jump out now.”

Nicky reached out for him and rubbed a hand over his back, but was already leaping out of the boat and into the water. They slowed the pace of their rowing as they watched him swim towards the ship.

“He’s fast,” Nile observed, sounding faintly impressed.

“When we used to—ah.” Nicky paused. “When we looked for Quynh, he’d jump out and swim. Dive, sometimes. Just, you know. Trying to see as deep as he could. There wasn’t much hope, but. He always tried.”

Booker’s guilt weighed more and more heavily as their journey wound on. He knew, without any question, that if he had been captured, Joe would expend the same tireless energy to save him. They all would—but Joe in particular would be the one who would dive in headfirst, with zero hesitation, to make things right for his family. He was protective. Of course, he’d been furious with Booker, who had violated what was most precious to Joe.

To ask for forgiveness felt impossible. Instead, he focused on the ship as it drew closer, and what he would say to make Quynh release Andy, and release her anger, and let them help her.

What he would do, too, if it all went wrong.

Missions usually energized Joe, but this one had exhausted him. From Nicky’s angry parting words to him at the airport, to the missed rendezvous, to the empty apartment and red-eye flight, to the intelligence agency rescue—it had all been a lot, and none of it felt quite as gratifying as a good mission usually did. This one seemed less heroic, and more like damage control—a desperate attempt to fix what might have already been ruined beyond repair.

Might have. But maybe not.

He reached the ship well after the little boat had, and he hoped that they wouldn’t do anything to alarm Quynh so that she set the boat in motion. Things seemed peaceful enough so far; at least, nobody was up on deck. Booker and Nile must have already gone below. Joe turned around, treading water, and looked back where they’d come from. He could see Nicky in the distance, in a boat bobbing gently over rolling waves. Joe reached up and pulled himself in behind the rotors, powered by steam—to see the opening, well above the water line, where he would need to jump inside.

That would be the easy part. He sighed. The coals would be hot, and he would have to find his way up to a door, burning and healing all the way, until he could free himself from the pit of coal. It might be locked, which would be problematic, but usually such locks weren’t difficult to pick. From there, he’d be in an engine room, and probably there would be only a short walk to wherever Quynh was keeping Andy. Where Booker and Nile would be attempting to keep her calm.

There was no part of the plan that was not painful. Not a single part.

He turned again just before climbing up and saw that Nicky was watching him. He smiled, raised a hand. Nicky smiled back, though tentatively. Fuck, they were a pair. Nicky was still clearly miserable about their fight, and the fact that there was no time to talk about it right now was a cruel reality that he’d accepted as its own kind of torture.

As he hoisted himself up, Joe forced himself to focus, too. The crisis of the moment wouldn’t go away unless they confronted it head on.

A smaller ship than he’d done this in before, it was easy to get into the coal reservoir. And though the coals were hot, the pain was muted somewhat by the fact that Joe was very cold, having swum some distance to get here, and being soaked through with it, from head to toe. But still, by the time he reached the top of the pit of coal, his skin was blistering, and by the time he found the little iron door, he was massively relieved to find it unlocked, as remaining still enough to pick it open with the flimsy knife in his pocket would have been nearly impossible.

Eventually, he supposed, if he’d gotten stuck in there, Nicky would have come for him. That, at least, he could still rely on.

He crept up to the door of the engine room, though it was pitch black away from the burning embers of the coals, and opened the door to the hallway. There was only one other room on the other side. That would be where his friends were. Already he could hear voices. He hesitated only for a moment before pushing the door open.

“I didn’t say I knew exactly what you went through!” Booker was protesting, one hand running through his hair in frustration.

Joe looked down in alarm. It appeared Nile was just returning to consciousness, with a bloom of red blood around her as her recently slit throat healed itself. Meanwhile, Andy was within reach of Quynh, still in chains, and in Quynh's hand, a silver knife flashed with the reflection of watery light from the window.

“You come here believing you can convince me that I’m not in pain?” Quynh said. “That I don’t know better than you do what I went through?”

“I would never presume—”

“You think,” she spoke over him, a soft, shrill laugh echoing through the room, “that I’m a monster. You all think it.” She glanced around. “You all—oh.” Her eyes fell on Joe, in the shadows near the door. “You’re here, after all.”

Joe had worried about this moment—sincerely feared it—more than he’d quite allowed himself to realize before. But when she was in front of him, all he wanted was to hold her.

So he did. He was across the room in three strides, and then he pulled her into his arms, where he felt—with some gratification—the knife she’d been viciously wielding at Nile fall from her fingers, suddenly and inexplicably, just like that. It hit the wooden boards with a dull thud, and Joe heard Nile scrambling to retrieve it. He still just held Quynh, held her for all he was worth. Her arms were wrapped tightly around him, and her breaths in his ear were rapid, disbelieving little gasps. He thought he heard her saying his name, so softly that he might have imagined it. Meanwhile, everything he wanted to say, every reassurance, every comfort, every plea, fell silent in his throat, and all he could do was hold her, with one hand tangled in her hair, and whisper, “Quynh.”

To be accepted without being judged. To be home again, and safe. To be loved. That was what Quynh needed.

Minutes passed, it seemed like, and nobody moved—not even Nile, whose presence Joe could feel heavily nearby. He realized, with a sudden jerk of consciousness, that Nile intended to attempt to pick Quynh’s pocket while she stood in Joe’s embrace. Her body language was sneaky but aggressive, hovering close, with the tension of a tightly wound spring—ready to release at any second. She wanted the key to release Andy. But it wouldn’t be needed, Joe was sure. He pulled back at last, rubbing her back, and pressed his forehead to hers. "Okay?" he whispered. She nodded, sniffling. He touched the back of her head and said, “Let’s unchain Andy, okay?”

“What?” Quynh looked at him, confused and exhausted, eyes glazing over a little.

“The chain.” He gestured. “Here.”

Quynh nodded, looking a little ashamed of herself—young, suddenly—as she pulled the key from her pocket. She placed it in Joe’s hand. Joe handed it to Nile without looking at her. Then he put his hands on Quynh’s face and held her there until she looked up at him.

“I know you’re not a monster,” he said. “You’re good. You were always good. They tried to take it from you—” his voice trembled as he saw Quynh’s tears spilled over onto her cheeks, and he used his thumbs to wipe them away, “but they can’t. Not really.”

Quynh closed her eyes tightly, unable to stop the tears now that they were coming. She had been clinging for all she was worth to the hurt, the damage that had been done to her. But now, she was breaking. Joe’s kindness was breaking her, because he was somewhere soft for her to land.

“I can’t find myself,” she sobbed, and she let him pull her back into his arms, face buried in his neck. “I don’t know how to—how to live anymore.”

“I know,” he whispered. Joe looked up at Andy, who was crying, too—with a look in her eyes that Joe had long ago forgotten. “It’s okay that you don’t know. I’m here. I’ll help you find yourself again.”

“So will I,” Andy said, and Quynh sobbed when she heard it, and seemed to cower a little in Joe’s arms. “Nobody blames you,” she added, reaching tentatively for Quynh’s back.

Quynh’s body shifted in Joe’s arms, and he sensed that she wanted Andy now. He stepped back, and when they embraced, Joe sighed heavily, feeling relief in such a deep, forgotten place that he almost couldn’t stand up beneath it.

They were whispering to each other, and Joe felt suddenly that this reunion ought to be private, that the others shouldn’t intrude and witness it. Quynh was still badly hurt, but the immediate danger had passed. They should give them their privacy now. He touched Andy's shoulder, and she gestured with her head, a look of peace on her face so serene that Joe couldn't help believing things might be okay now, somehow. Silently, he gestured to the others and directed them up to the deck. Just before going himself, he carefully withdrew the chain from the rings in the wall and carried it with him. He couldn’t stop his eyes from wandering the room as he departed it, seeking and finding the cages in the corner. Wishing he could destroy them and throw the pieces into the sea.

When they reached the deck, Nicky was standing there, evidently having just climbed up the side—since there was nobody to pull up his boat. He was a little breathless, concern written on his face.

“They’re okay,” Nile said, smiling tiredly at him. She threw herself down onto the deck as though she was the one who’d just swam halfway across the sea. “We’re all okay.”

“I couldn’t wait,” Nicky replied, somewhat apologetically.

“It’s okay,” Joe answered. He looked down at the chains in his hands. He thought of the cages. In two steps he was at Nicky’s side, arms sliding around his waist.

“Are you going to chain me up, then?” Nicky asked softly, mostly joking, though there was a little nervous tremor in his voice—still unsure whether Joe forgave him.

Beautiful, beautiful man. Joe squeezed him close for a moment, felt Nicky’s answering relief. He couldn’t resist whispering against the shell of his ear before he withdrew, “Maybe later, Nicolo. If you like.”


	8. Peace

Night had fallen, a full moon casting light over the ship. They had set sail for France, though what they would do once they reached it remained in doubt. Everybody had been too tired to discuss it.

Nile, Andy, and Quynh were asleep below deck, and Booker was asleep above it—wrapped in a woolly blanket they’d found on board, and snoring loudly. Joe was at the helm, the only one among them who’d gotten enough rest in the past 24 hours to be any use on the return journey. He looked beautiful in the moonlight. Nicky gazed at the shape of him from where he lay on deck. He was supposed to be sleeping, too—but sleep wouldn’t come for him.

Instead, he found himself rising to his feet, drawing Joe’s attention to himself as he made his way slowly towards him.

“Nicolo,” Joe said softly, smiling up at him when Nicky reached him.

Nicky sank to his knees beside him and laid his head on Joe’s lap. “Yusuf,” he whispered.

As soon as Nicky was settled there, Joe’s fingers were in his hair. “You’ve never looked so tired,” he said, the tone of his voice as gentle and warm as an embrace. “Won’t you sleep?”

Nicky sighed softly against the fabric of Joe’s slacks. He turned his head towards Joe’s groin, rather shamelessly inhaling the musky scent there. He felt Joe twitching, answering his sigh with one of his own, and tightening his fingers in his hair.

“Nicky,” he said softly. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I love doing this,” Nicky answered, lips seeking the shape of Joe’s hardening cock, longing for its flavor on his tongue. His eyes felt teary, suddenly. He wanted more than its flavor; he wanted its form, long and thick. He wanted it bumping the back of his throat, spreading his lips, filling him wide and deep, using him up until he was sore and trembling and sure beyond a shadow of a doubt exactly who he belonged to. After everything that had happened, all that he’d done—there was nothing more important than this.

Joe exhaled shakily and let himself have everything Nicky gave, moaning quietly and moving as Nicky guided him. The night was so still, a soft breeze playing in the air and giving the slightest chill, which the heat of Nicky’s mouth sought to erase. Nicky felt himself hardening in his own slacks when he heard Joe hiss with pleasure, hands tugging hard on Nicky’s hair, and making every effort to be as close to silent as he could be. They’d never done this on a mission before; never, when they could be so easily observed. But Nicky knew nobody would interrupt them; his own exhaustion told him how deep and immovable the others’ rest must be. And even if they would have awoken, he couldn’t stop this. He’d waited too long already to show Joe how sorry he was. How much he loved him, treasured him, above anything else.

Joe was gentler than Nicky had thought he’d wanted him to be. He’d pictured something rough, Joe thrusting into him and making him pay for the harsh words he’d said, and for the lies he had told, though they’d been inadvertent. But there was no anger in Joe’s energy, no hardness. He didn’t feel punished; he felt cherished. Joe’s soft sighs, his fingers in Nicky’s hair, his whispered encouragement and affection—love swept over every surface that anger had eroded and made it smooth again.

After, Nicky sat back on his heels, and Joe touched Nicky’s swollen lips with one hand, gazing down at him in the bluish light. “ _Bello_ ,” he whispered, before letting his hand graze down to Nicky’s chin, his neck, his collarbone.

Nicky closed his eyes, stopping Joe’s hands when he reached lower, evidently ready to return the favor. “No, I just…I wanted to do this for you,” Nicky whispered. “After everything.”

“After everything?” Joe repeated. Nicky looked up into his eyes and saw concern there.

“You’re not angry,” Nicky said quietly. It wasn’t quite a question, but Joe answered him anyway.

“No. I was, but. Not now.”

Nicky sighed and laid his head again on Joe’s lap. He closed his eyes and let Joe comb through his hair again, fingers long and warm. Without looking up, Nicky said, “I betrayed your trust.” The words ached to say. His throat closed around them sharply, and his eyes stung at the admission.

But Joe whispered, “No. Never.” He leaned down and kissed Nicky’s hair, one arm coming around his back where Nicky still huddled against Joe’s lap.

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” Nicky whispered. It was easier, talking this way. “I knew Quynh was at Booker’s, and I was so eager to see her again. I just…went there.”

“It’s fine,” Joe said, “I would have done the same thing. I almost did, until I remembered…well.”

Nicky looked up. “Until you remembered that I’d promised not to. So you couldn’t either.”

“That’s right,” Joe said, “but I shouldn’t have asked you to promise that.” He paused. “Actually, I didn’t ask you to promise that.” There was a twinkle in his eye, almost like a wink, and Nicky knew Joe would have laughed if Nicky wasn’t being so serious himself. Instead, he stroked his hand back up through Nicky’s hair again and looked at him very sincerely. “But I understand why you felt you had to.”

“You’re being far more understanding of me than I was of you,” Nicky answered, looking downward, wishing his face was hidden in Joe’s lap again.

Joe tipped his chin up and held his gaze for a long, quiet moment. “Let’s forget about it,” he said quietly. “About our fight,” he clarified. “There are things we need to talk about, and we’ve been avoiding them for too long. That’s why it all burst out the way it did. It isn’t more your fault than mine.”

Nicky allowed himself to duck his head again, smiling against Joe’s pantleg. For the first time since cooking dinner that night at Quynh’s for everybody but Joe, he felt the burden of guilt lifting off of his shoulders. Joe simply wouldn’t let him bear it—and if Joe didn’t want to blame him, it seemed pointless to blame himself. It occurred to him, while he was still half-hard in his pants, that there was no real reason not to let Joe return the favor yet tonight, after all. But it hardly seemed like the time to bring that up. Instead, he said, “I should have spent the night with you.”

Joe laughed softly. “Oh, is that what’s bothering you? Never mind. We still can. I’ll bring you back to Paris whenever you like.”

Nicky reached up his hands, putting them on Joe’s waist. “We’re on our way to Paris now.”

“That’s true.” Joe glanced ahead, saw nothing but smooth water and clear skies. He looked back down at Nicky, smiling as he allowed him to pull Joe off the bench and onto his knees beside him. “What’s this?” he asked quietly, wrapping both arms around Nicky’s back and drawing them together, from forehead to knee.

“You’re the only one in the world who makes me feel this good,” Nicky whispered.

Joe smiled. “How good?”

Nicky drew in a breath to respond, but his body betrayed his want first. Joe bumped into him, then rubbed intentionally, making Nicky shiver.

Joe leaned in and tugged Nicky’s ear with his teeth, just hard enough to sting. “Do you want me to make you feel good?”

Nicky nodded and felt a tremor roll all the way through him.

“Okay, then.” Joe sounded faintly amused, and his voice was light and full of affection. Nicky let Joe lay him on his back, stretch out beside him, and take him in his hand, with a palm work-worn and rough. Their lips met while Joe’s hand moved urgently, with pressure that was almost too much, too tight, too hot, too everything. Just how Nicky liked it. Joe kissed him more aggressively than usual, in contrast to the gentleness of his words, probably because he knew how much Nicky loved being kissed like this—how hard it made him, how ready. They knew each other’s bodies so well. When Nicky was close, breath catching, Joe ducked down and took him in his mouth, after all, swallowing him deep and making Nicky cry out louder than he meant to, throwing an arm over his mouth to keep from disturbing Booker, who was still snoring on the other end of the deck. His pleasure ripped the stars from his vision, until the night sky was just a blur, and waves of sensation washed over him and left him trembling, wrung out and spent.

“Fuck,” Nicky whispered, laughing softly as he came down from it. Joe crawled up his body to kiss him again, laughing, too.

“See what you missed? We could have had a whole night of that in Paris.”

Nicky smiled up at him, riding too high on the haze of his orgasm to be annoyed at his teasing.

Perceiving this, Joe continued, “You want to do this when we get there? Or something else.”

Nicky lifted head to glance at Joe, extending an arm over his head. He was too comfortable and sated to speak.

Joe dropped down to kiss his bicep, rubbed his side as though to wake him, and said, “Hmm?”

“You promised to chain me to something,” Nicky finally whispered, eyes still closed. “What would you do then?”

Joe licked the side of Nicky’s face. “Hmm…I’m thinking…New York, 1803.”

Nicky laughed again. He felt lighter than air. “Yeah?”

“Why not? You were amazing that night.”

“Mmm.” Nicky could hardly believe Joe still thought about that—the delicious, wicked, absolutely filthy things they'd done to each other. That had been the last time they'd fought like this, in fact. He'd forgotten how good it was to make up; the fighting was almost worth it.

Joe sighed and kissed Nicky’s arm again, and they fell into a companionable silence. The stars seemed to move whenever Nicky blinked his eyes.

“You smell good,” Joe said, nuzzling his face into the crook of Nicky’s neck.

“Do I?”

“Yeah. Earthy, you know? Like you—”

“Like I haven’t showered,” Nicky said lightly, “or swam, or washed at all, for three days.”

Joe smiled. “Yes.” He kissed Nicky’s neck. “Maybe ‘good’ isn’t the right word for the smell.”

Nicky laughed and let his hands travel up Joe’s back. “Probably not.”

“I love it, though.” Joe sounded muffled, lips still sucking Nicky’s skin lightly.

“Good,” Nicky said, “because it belongs to you. Everything I am belongs to you.”

Joe drew back and smiled down at Nicky, who met his gaze with equal softness. “I think I’ll keep you, in that case.”

Nicky took a deep breath and sighed. “Anyone else would have been much angrier with me, you know.”

“How would you know? I’m the only lover you’ve had in a thousand years.” Joe’s eyes were sparkling, and Nicky poked his side and made him laugh.

“I would have been furious with you,” Nicky said, softly, eyes slipping downward, “if you’d done the same.”

Joe was leaning on one elbow now, with the other hand resting gently on Nicky’s chest as he considered this. “You wouldn’t have forgiven me?” he said.

Nicky’s eyes sprang back up to his, with an urgent need to erase the note of sorrow he’d just heard in Joe’s voice. “No, I—of course, I would have. But just,” he closed his eyes. “Imagining it. If I’d spent the night all alone, missing you, and then you never showed up at the rendezvous, and I’d tracked you down and found your things hidden in my adversary’s apartment—”

“Booker isn’t my adversary.”

“In the apartment of someone you’d promised me not to see, then. And then I had to go clean up the mess you’d gotten yourself into.”

“Well,” Joe said quietly, after Nicky’s angst-filled recitation of his own many wrongs fizzled to silence. He touched Nicky’s face and waited for Nicky to meet his eye again. “When you put it like that…” He was teasing, but Nicky didn’t smile. Joe rubbed a hand on Nicky’s chest and said, “Let me paint you a different picture. Imagine I’d come to Paris eager to see a friend who needed me, but also aware that she was likely staying with a person who had caused me and my lover great harm. Someone I knew he didn't want to see again, though I was open to it. I was open to it because I loved him as a brother and pitied him,” Joe added, prodding Nicky when his eyes began to fill and wander away, “and I sensed that the solution we’d crafted after his betrayal was a poor one. But my lover wouldn’t listen to me, would become furious whenever I mentioned it, would even insult me rather than hearing what I had to say. And it hurt me, so I lashed out at him in anger.”

Nicky squeezed his eyes closed, as tightly as he could, and his heart ached when Joe’s lips touched his. “I’m sorry, too,” Joe whispered.

“No,” Nicky protested, “don’t apologize to me. You had every right to act the way you did.” He sniffed and wiped his tears hastily, pulling Joe down for another kiss. It was slow and lazy, and neither of them seemed to want it to end. Joe opened his lips for Nicky as soon as his tongue sought entry, and they rubbed against each other until they were both hard again, groaning with every touch that was just this side of too much, until Joe finally pulled away, panting, eyes very dark.

“We have to stop that before we wake Booker,” he said breathlessly, gazing down into Nicky’s eyes and seeing all his desire reflected back onto himself. He groaned again. “Fuck,” he said under his breath, then laughed a little. “I want to do so many things to you.”

“Okay,” Nicky answered, craning his neck for just one more kiss. “Later, you can. Just—”

They kissed again, until Joe pulled away once more, laughing through his obvious frustration. “We can wait. Until Paris.”

“Mmm.” Nicky dove in for one more kiss, and Joe gave up fighting it, wrapped his arms tightly around him and rose up to rub against Nicky, their hardness answering each other, both throbbing with want.

They had no clothes to change into, no towels to wash up with; it was a horrible idea to finish this way, but neither of them could seem to stop themselves. Joe finally wrenched himself out of Nicky’s arms, hissing, “Fuck, Nicky,” as he dragged himself off of him. Then he sat back, putting his arms down at his sides and sitting on his hands. Nicky laughed; that was one way to keep his hands off of him.

“Okay. Sorry. Yes.” Nicky’s skin was flushed, and he laughed when Joe pushed himself back further, out of touching distance.

“Talk about something else, please,” Joe said, face taut with strain.

Nicky laughed, fighting every instinct he had to throw himself back into Joe’s arms. “Um…” He glanced around. The stars were brighter now—or his ability to see them had improved. He looked down at Joe again. “Well, I think we may be off-course now.”

“Off-course? We—oh,” Joe hopped up and seated himself at the helm again, laughing. “Yes, we have drifted, haven’t we?” He chuckled as he righted the ship’s direction. “Okay. Point taken. I’ve got a boat to steer.”

Nicky came close, leaned against Joe’s legs, and sighed. He never wanted to be further away from Joe than this.

“You can rest,” Joe said, his hand reaching down to Nicky’s hair again.

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“Lie down here, then.”

“I could put my head in your lap again,” Nicky suggested, but Joe stopped him.

“No, I think we’d run into a familiar problem.” Joe tugged Nicky’s collar. “I can’t wait to get you to a real bed, Nicolo.”

Nicky shivered, then smiled. “Let’s just talk, then.”

“About what?” Joe looked back out at the ocean, and Nicky understood that even now, this subject was hard for him.

“About…the things we’ve needed to talk about that we haven’t.”

Joe sighed. “Right now?”

Nicky pressed his mouth against Joe’s knee and considered for a moment. “Yes,” he finally said, “now.”

Another sigh. But then, Joe said, “Okay. I’m listening, Nicky.”

Nicky hadn’t necessarily intended to go first; he wanted to hear what Joe had to say, and all the things he knew had been hurting him for months that they’d never gotten around to talking about. But that was heavy, and tonight felt lighter. Maybe they could ease their way into that. So instead, Nicky said, “I think we need to come up with a better system for—consequences, I suppose. A better resolution for when things like this happen.”

Joe nodded, thoughtful. “Okay,” he said when Nicky didn’t go on right away, “like what?”

Nicky had been expecting this. “Well, I think it depends largely on the risk. Obviously, if we thought Booker would keep betraying us, then we wouldn’t want him in our inner circle anymore.”

“Right,” Joe replied.

“But if we find that he’s truly remorseful, and that he had good reasons to do what he did, then we should try to find a solution.”

“Good reasons?” Joe began, but Nicky heard him catch himself before he could lose his temper again. He appreciated it more than he could express when Joe slowed himself down, took a deep breath, and said, “I think I know what you mean. That he did what he did because he was hurting.”

“Yes,” Nicky said, and he felt an unexpected flood of relief at being understood in that moment when he felt unworthy of understanding. “He said he felt he had nothing but his grief. Dealing with that grief is important, don’t you agree?”

“I do,” Joe said, and his hand on Nicky’s head drifted down to his shoulder, which he squeezed. “Do you think…we should have done more? Sooner?”

That was exactly what Nicky thought. He sighed. The fact that Joe had suggested it meant he’d probably suspected as much, too. And now, it almost felt like too late. “We always find a dessert for Andy to try, wherever we go. You know? We buy her little gifts. And though she goes away often, and we separate from her, we hug her when we see her again. I can’t remember if I’ve ever hugged Booker.”

Joe breathed deeply. “You think we can fix this with a few hugs?”

Nicky sat up and looked into his eyes, unsure how to respond without starting another argument.

Joe's eyes grew sadder, seeming to recognize his thoughts, and he touched Nicky's hair. “I know. Sorry.” They were both quiet for a moment. When Joe spoke again, his voice was calm again. “I understand you. We don’t treat Booker like we treat Andy, or like we treat each other. We’ve treated him like he’s less important.”

“Yes,” Nicky said, relief flooding him that, despite his inability to put something so complex into words, Joe did understand.

They were quiet for a moment, and Joe was next to speak.

“So, okay—banishment is out. What should we do, then? Assign him jobs without letting him join the planning phases? Giving him the worst tasks that nobody else wants?”

Nicky laughed softly. He scooted down, pulling Joe’s arm around his shoulder, and rested his head on Joe’s lap again.

“I’m just thinking of ideas,” Joe said, laughing too. “I know it’s not that simple, but. We have to keep each other safe.” His voice became more serious, and he added, “He’s responsible for what he did. He’s responsible for not asking for help sooner. I’ll never say otherwise, but…” He sighed.

Nicky tilted his head back to glance up at him. “What?”

“He was right that we don’t get it. What he’s going through. We’ve been insensitive to him, and…and maybe a little bit selfish, ourselves.”

They were both quiet for a moment, thinking of how Booker had tried to defend himself after he’d turned them over to be studied. To be tortured. He’d claimed that the grief drove him to it, and though Nicky and Joe had certainly had their share of grief, Nicky could only imagine Booker’s specific brand of pain. He and Joe had never needed to say goodbye to each other; the worse pain they’d dealt with had to do with fearing for the other’s safety. Until Booker had betrayed them, that fear had been negligible. It was worse now, of course. Perhaps from now on, it would always be a little worse.

Joe’s hand found Nicky’s hair again and massaged him slowly, a deep pressure that emanated from the roots of his hair all the way down his neck, his spine, right through to the soles of his feet. Joe knew exactly how to touch Nicky, every motion that made him feel right, completely right, like there was nothing to fear in the world, as long as he had this.

“Why don’t you sleep,” Joe said again after a few moments.

Nicky had been almost asleep there on his knees when Joe said it, and he blinked up blearily at him.

“Here,” Joe said, “lie down right here.”

Nicky did as Joe bade him, and when Joe stood up and went away, returning with another of those thick blankets, Nicky let Joe tuck it around him, tousling his hair again before returning to the helm.

“You don’t mind if I sleep?” Nicky asked, yawning, almost drifting off.

“I prefer it. You’re insufferable when you’re tired.”

Nicky snorted and jabbed Joe’s thigh playfully before curling up around one of his legs, sleepily kissing his ankle—the only skin he could find, and not a place he typically kissed. He nestled against Joe’s skin and let his eyes close, knowing that they would figure it all out—whatever this was. He felt like he’d passed a test after having gotten most of the answers wrong, like some miraculous twist of fate had swept through to adjust the rules at the last minute. Joe had adjusted the rules. His love wrapped around Nicky like a blanket, and he felt sleep drift over him in waves as the boat rocked, harmlessly now, and everything felt suddenly at peace.

They could do this for their friends, too. They could make things right again. It was the first time in history that this particular group of people were together, just like this. Nicky knew that meant something amazing; when they woke up tomorrow, they would figure it out. And even if they couldn’t get it perfect right away, at least they’d be together. For now, it was enough.


End file.
